Close Encounters 3
by chezchuckles
Summary: Sequel to CE1 and CE2: After the death of Coonan, CIA Agent Richard Castle attempts to find the man behind Beckett's mother's murder, but events have a way of unfolding exactly as they have before.
1. Chapter 1

**Close Encounters 3: Die Another Day**

* * *

_Once again, I do not claim ownership of any of these characters - not Bond, not Castle. _

Please read Close Encounters 1 and 2 to have any idea whatsoever what's going on here. Not even **I** can keep track.

This one is for **cartographical** who loves Spy Castle so much that she browbeats me into writing him.

* * *

"You're terrible for me," she groaned, but her hips said something different.

He grinned into her mouth and dragged his hand down the arch of her back, the vivid and intense curl of her body as she came apart.

She gasped for breath and her eyes blinked open, the tremors vibrating so that he felt every single one, and he touched his mouth to the sweat at the hollow of her throat.

"I hate you. I really hate you," she gasped.

He licked and suckled at the ridge of her collarbone and gentled his hand against her stomach, tripped upwards to her mouth and kissed her softly.

She came down slowly, and then her body curled around his and she nuzzled into him.

He loved sleepy-cat Kate Beckett, where she often nibbled at his jaw or nudged her nose into him, warm and pliant and trying to get closer. Still fiercely independent, still ready and willing to brush him off if she thought he was at all smirking over it. Her.

"Kate," he hummed and pressed his lips into hers for another kiss.

"Mmm, yeah?"

"You're amazing."

"I know," she said faintly, already dipping into sleep. But he wanted more than that.

"You gonna marry me, Beckett?"

"You still haven't asked nicely."

"What was that?" he growled, nipping at her jaw, soothing it with his tongue. He gripped her hip and tugged her in closer to his body, her bed creaking as they moved. "I thought I just asked."

"That wasn't nicely. That was demanding and sardonic and-"

"How do you have so many good words after a round like that? You should be passed out," he muttered, traveling slowly up her jaw to her ear. She shivered though and curled an arm around his shoulders.

"Gotta be the right time," she murmured and her eyes opened to him, teasing and tired.

"I won't stop until you say yes."

"I won't say yes until you can mean it."

Oh, he meant it. But she was right. He'd only just gotten back to duty, a month of mostly travel for work - spy business, she called it - and when he was home, at her home, they did this.

They got reacquainted. And it was so very good.

But this wasn't how he wanted to start a marriage with her.

"I always mean it," he said finally. But she was asleep.

He meant it, but they weren't always good for each other; sometimes they rubbed each other raw, exposed, and neither of them had the ability to back down and call a truce.

It was war between them, and they battled without mercy.

But he'd have her. One day, some day. He'd have her.

It just might have to be _after_ her mother's case was solved.

* * *

"Beckett, I think you should stop."

She stalked away from him, shoving both hands through her hair before pivoting on her heel to face him. She had to swallow down the instinctive urge to lash out, to _hurt_ him for that, and instead she modulated her tone, kept herself in check.

"We are so close, Castle." She dropped her hands and lifted her eyes to his.

Standing there, her CIA spy looked for all the world like her apartment was his own little kingdom. He had a hip cocked against her kitchen counter, an insufferable twist on his lips, and when she actually looked around-

Shit, he'd practically moved in.

No wonder he thought he could order her around, flash his smile and have her on her knees for him. She was so tired of running into the wall of his damn CIA secrecy. He had a lead but he couldn't tell her; he knew a guy, but he couldn't have her come with him. He gave her bits and pieces and expected her to be grateful.

"I have a lead. I have a good lead on this case, Castle. I'm not stopping now."

"Beckett, we can't run at this head on. This guy has NSA in his back pocket; it calls for a subtlety you and the boys lack."

His smirk had her hands clenching. "You've been listening to your asshole of a father again, haven't you?"

He jerked back at that, the steeled ice sheeting his eyes and removing him from her.

But Black was a bastard, and Castle needed to stop calling the man whenever their investigation stalled, running to his father for help. She hated having Black's fingerprints all over this, with his sneering disdain for the NYPD and his not-at-all subtle comments about her capabilities.

"Let's leave my father out of this," he said finally, his eyes like polar ice caps. "I'm not changing my mind, Beckett. We're not starting a war until I'm certain we know who the hell we're fighting against."

"If it's a war, then it's a war. We're not sitting on this while-"

"Your life is in danger, Beckett. My life is in danger. These are serious threats."

"Because were are _so close_. We have him running scared, and now is the time to-"

"Now is the time to lie low," he hissed, reaching out and snagging her by the wrist. "Lie low and live to fight another day."

She shrugged him off and paced away. "You don't understand. I need-"

"The fuck I don't," he snorted. She spun back to him, eyes narrowed, but he looked just as pissed as she felt.

"Then help me. Help me, or I will do this alone, Castle."

"No, you won't. The Agency has jurisdiction-"

She snorted, crossed her arms over her chest. "When the hell have you ever cared about the Agency's jurisdiction? This is my mother's case, not your damn playground."

He jerked to attention. "_Play_ground-"

"Showing up at the 12th, commandeering my team, seducing me so you can have your way, doling out pieces of information when you think I can _handle_ it. I'm sick of you bullying me, Castle."

"Bullying you? What the hell-"

"I'm so tired of you holding it over my head. I _know_ I fucked up. I was the one you bled all over, remember? But you don't get to-"

"I do get to," he snarled, stalking forward. "I get to say, Detective Beckett, because it is _my case now_. And you need to stop."

"It's my mother. And I won't stop," she said, her voice raw in her throat. "You know I won't."

"As the lead on this case, I'm telling you-"

"Fuck off," she snarled.

The cold in his eyes swirled up as he came closer. When he touched her, it wasn't the crushing, icy grip she was expecting, but the press of his warm palm to her neck, thumb stroking her jaw. He was turning the heat up, but it didn't melt the deadly, closed-off certainty in his eyes - or the resolve in hers.

He leaned in, his breath skirting her cheek, nose nuzzling. "As the man sleeping in your bed, Kate Beckett, I am asking you to stop."

She closed her eyes, tried to force breath past that.

Damn it. He was still seducing her for his own ends, bringing out the charm to beguile her away from what she knew to be true.

"I won't stop." She sucked in a breath and opened her eyes. "And you need to leave."

* * *

He couldn't believe they'd been talking about marriage only five months ago, ensconsed at her father's cabin with the scent of spring and the ripple of the lake. Marriage. They were both fooling themselves.

Castle slammed his door shut and threw the dead bolt, a guarantee that she couldn't come sneaking in later tonight, trying to make it up to him. Not that she would. She'd never apologize, but after some of their more spectacular fights, she'd slid into his bed at three in the morning, looking for sex.

He'd always been too angry or too stupid to say no to her. She knew exactly what to do to get him, and even though she would stay the next morning, wake him slowly, smile at him with all that feeling shining in her eyes, he also knew nothing had truly been resolved.

Well, tonight had resolved quite a lot, hadn't it?

He was a bully who was holding her mother's case hostage until she met his demands. And exactly how untrue was her accusation?

He _was_ holding it hostage. Doling it out, as she'd said. He couldn't slip the leash and let her run wild; she'd kill herself going after this case. Already, he'd been informed through unofficial channels that the NSA wanted him done with it. The spent bullet left at his door, the dead fish in one of the motor pool cars - warnings and messages. _We are close, we know what you're doing. You are going to stop._

And Beckett. If _he_ was being targeted, then she was as well. She'd hidden the last two threatening voice mails, hadn't told him about them, but he'd tapped her phones a month ago after the first one came in. He hadn't told her that of course, but-

Yeah, he was a domineering brute who took after his bastard father. She was right.

His phone rang sharply in the dark quiet of his apartment and Castle realized he was just standing stupidly in the kitchen. He pulled out his phone and didn't recognize the number.

Probably not Beckett then.

"Castle," he answered.

"Agent Castle. This is Roy Montgomery. Beckett's Captain at the 12th."

"Yes, sir. I know who you are."

"No, I don't think you do. No one really does."

Castle's body pitched into high alert at the tone of the man's voice, alarm bells going off. "Sir?"

"I need you to meet me. And Beckett. Her life depends on it."

"What?" he hoarsed, already turning back for his front door. "I was just with her. What happened?"

"It's what will happen. Soon. And I'm going to need your help keeping Beckett alive."

He hit the hallway at a sprint.

* * *

Castle found the airfield with little need for navigation, parked the CIA motor pool's Range Rover in the dark shadows at the back of the hangar. He spotted Beckett's unmarked and passed it, felt the hood. She'd been here a while.

He stepped quickly along the concrete, checked his holster for his weapon and pulled it out as he found the side door. He could hear voices, an argument, the stress breaking Beckett's voice. The sound of it made his chest tight, how needy she was, how she'd gotten so far down that hole already and it was his fault. He'd done this to her.

They'd come back from his recovery at her father's cabin, and as if he needed to prove something to her, make it up to her, he'd thrown himself into her mother's case. He went to physical therapy at the CIA office, and then he spent equal time chasing down leads.

He was close to an answer.

Castle slipped inside the hangar, the vast space wreaking havoc with his depth perception, Beckett's insistent voice echoing in the air. Her captain's tones were lower, but somehow more unhinged than hers.

A high-ranking official with DoD ties and the NSA at his command. Someone who'd become involved in a scheme to kidnap mafia members and hold them for ransom. But Castle's leads kept dying - assassinated or disappeared before he and Beckett could get to them. Both of the cops who'd confessed to the kidnap plot - dead. The third man in that group was still an unknown.

He shifted around the last plane and came to a stunned stop.

They had their weapons trained on each other. Her _captain_.

"It was you. Did you kill her?" Beckett said, her voice trembling but so angry. Pissed.

Castle squeezed the grip of his weapon and took a soft, slow step forward.

"No. No, I'd never - but it was our fault. And the moment you came into my precinct, Kate, it was like a gift from God. A chance at redemption, to atone for the things I'd done, the things I let happen."

Castle came forward, keeping to the shadows. So far, neither had noticed him.

"Tell me who," she said, her voice ringing in the hangar.

"No. I do that, might as well shoot you where you stand. They want you dead, Kate-"

"You owe me that. A name. You owe me a name-"

"I will not let them kill you. I couldn't stop your mother-"

"A _name_. Just give me the name."

"They're coming for you, Beckett. Right now. But I'm going to stop them. That's why I called him."

Castle froze, but it was too late; Montgomery had seen him even in the shadows. Beckett had lowered her gun but now she twisted to look at him.

"Castle."

"Go on, Agent. Take her out of here."

"They're coming right now?" he asked, stepping forward into the pale light. The front of the hangar was open to the moon and the flat expanse of runway.

"A set-up. I was supposed to deliver Kate to them. But I won't. I'm taking them down with me-"

"No. Wait," Beckett begged, stepping forward. "You want forgiveness? I forgive you. Just tell me who's behind all this."

She still couldn't stop. Montgomery was right to call him; she'd stay here and battle if he let her.

And then he saw the twin beams of headlights down the road, heard the sudden roar of motors. A caravan. A hit squad.

"Agent Castle. Get her out now."

Castle strode forward and wrapped his arms around her waist, picked her up.

"No!" She thrashed, elbow digging hard into his shoulder, a heel against his shin, but he backed away, his eyes on Montgomery's steady, rock-solid profile. "Castle, please. Castle-"

"Take her out of here. I've got to do this." Captain Montgomery nodded at him and Castle turned his eyes to the cars approaching. She struggled against him.

"Let me stay with you," Kate begged, one of her arms trying to wriggle out from under his, the other beseeching her Captain. "We can do this together. Please, please, Roy-"

"It's not your fight, Beckett."

"No," she moaned, but Castle had already turned around and was heading for the side door even as she sobbed. "Castle, let me down. Let me down, _God_, they're going to kill him-"

But Montgomery had made it clear. And he knew the man was right; Beckett would stand and fight, in full view, spit in the face of her killers.

Castle gripped her harder even as she struggled, hustled her out into the night.

If he could get her to stay put, to just _stay in the damn car_, maybe he could come back and take a few of them out.

It was all the could offer the man who'd chosen to stay behind.

"Castle, _please._"

* * *

He pressed his body against hers at his Range Rover, a hand over her mouth as she sobbed, begged to be let back inside that hangar. She fought, but she couldn't overwhelm him.

He didn't even have a chance to go back for Roy; her fists beat at his chest, but her knees gave away, sliding down, and he held her up, cradled her through the agony of an endless round of gunfire.

"Shh, shh, Kate. Please," he murmured, his fingers wet with her tears, his palm with the heat of her open, sobbing mouth. "I know, I know, love, but you have to be quiet."

Her head rolled back and her throat worked convulsively, her rage and her grief so intertwined that he couldn't keep her still. Her heart threw itself at the cage of her ribs, making them both shake, and he leaned his hips further into hers, pressed his forehead against Kate's and breathed in her gulping sobs. Just breathed with her, because he could do nothing else.

Nothing.

Behind him, all went quiet, preternaturally still, but he hadn't heard the cars leav-

A gunshot ripped the night and she broke in his arms, crumpling even as he fought to keep her up, both of them swanning to the gravel at the back wheel of his vehicle.

She sobbed and he held her against him, cradled her, even as he knew, he knew - no one was leaving that hangar alive.

* * *

"This stays between us," she said quietly, her head down and her shoulders hunched. "Stays in the family."

Castle kept his hands to himself, kept watch as the sentinel outside their little group, even though he wanted to cover her with his body, enclose her.

Esposito turned and gave him a dark look. The other one, Ryan, was refusing to look at all.

"What about him? He ain't family."

Castle shifted on his feet to step away, but she lifted her head and angrily eyed her detective. "He's the one who got me this far, who figured it out, Javi. He's in this."

Ryan's eyes moved to his in a long look, more sober assessment in them than in his partner's. Castle would have to cultivate that when given the opportunity; Ryan was asset material.

"Fine. He's in. But tell me we are not giving this over to the damn CIA."

"You're not," Castle answered instead. "You didn't have this case in the first place. So it's still not yours."

"What?" Ryan yelped, but Espo was on his feet in a flash.

Castle wouldn't take his eyes off them to look at Beckett, but he didn't need to know her position. It hadn't changed, despite what had happened in that hangar two nights ago. She was against him.

"This case is mine. I used federal resources to crack it open, and a federal crime is being perpetrated. Not to mention the NSA is involved. In order to maintain national security, this doesn't go past me."

"My Captain was murdered," Esposito spit back.

"I was there."

A noise from Beckett had him side-stepping Esposito and heading for Kate before he could stop himself. She raised her head and her eyes were so desolate, so cold, that he halted in his tracks.

She didn't want him. He was a bully, right? That's what she'd said. He was a bully who liked to hold her mother's case over her head until he got what he wanted.

Fine.

Castle turned around and went back to his spot on the edge of the circle. He blanked his mind, regained his center, and kept it off his face.

Beckett made fists on the couch and cleared her throat. "Javi, the case isn't ours, but that's - that could be a good thing."

Castle gritted his teeth against the hope that flared white-hot in his chest, tamped it down even as his body betrayed him and his eyes sought hers.

She was trying to say something, in that look, something she wanted him to know.

He just didn't know what it was.

"How's that a good thing?" Ryan said suddenly. "Tell us why letting him have this case is a good thing."

Beckett pressed her lips together but her eyes were on Castle's still. When she answered, he could hear the long, terrible night in her voice.

"Because we can't let it get out, what he did. What Montgomery did. Investigating his murder requires asking questions that. . ."

"Are best left to me," Castle finished.

Kate nodded slowly, once, but she couldn't seem to bring her eyes back to his.

He was a bully still, even if he was right.

* * *

He stayed when the others left. She stood in the middle of her living room and watched the tic in his jaw, the muscle that flared and moved under skin she'd tasted, and she wanted to be lost. Forget for a while.

"Castle."

His head came up slowly.

"Stay tonight."

"No." His voice was like sandpaper and she flinched. But he stepped closer, a hand gesturing ineffectually at his side. "Either I stay. Or I don't."

She blinked and looked at him.

"Not just because - not just tonight." His eyes were a bleak mid-winter.

"Stay," she corrected, even knowing she shouldn't. But it was him - Castle, her spy. They'd fought, but they always fought. And now her Captain was dead. "Just stay."

He came for her then, wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his nose in her neck, and the grief flashed over her in a flood.

She'd treated him so badly, been so withdrawn and alone since Montgomery was shot two days ago, and all he wanted was this. All he asked for was this.

"I'm so sorry, Kate-"

"No, I'm sorry," she moaned, pressing her mouth to his cheek. "I am so sorry-"

"I didn't know what else to do-"

"It's not your fault that he's dead," she said, gulping hard to get herself under control. "Not at all your fault. He made those choices."

"I meant. You're right. I am a bully; I've been holding this case back from you because I couldn't see any other way-"

She groaned and clasped his face with her hands, pressed her mouth to his just to stop his unceasing, limitless love. She'd been narrowed down to her baser elements these past few months - years, really - and she'd treated him like crap because of it. The case always did that to her, stripped her of everything else.

She cradled his cheeks and softened her kiss, broke from him to see the way his emotion came rising to the surface of his eyes. He let her see it now; he was letting her see everything.

"I don't deserve you," she murmured. "You are so beautiful to me and I-"

"Stop," he said gruffly, drawing his hands up to her face and mirroring her posture. His love was like a taste in her mouth, rich and explosive. "I don't want to hear it anymore. I want you, Kate."

"Come to bed," she offered, her only consolation for the past week's worth of rigid and terrible behavior, the last two nights' cold distance. "Let me love you."

"You already do," he whispered, his lips touching hers.

But she knew he wasn't right. She knew a love like his required more from her, demanded more, deserved more.

He deserved better of her.

And she'd do her best to make it up to him.

* * *

His mouth was warm, but his skin on fire.

She roamed down his torso to the waistband of his jeans, stroked her hands over his thighs. He stilled suddenly in the hallway, made their bodies collide, and she lifted her eyes to look at him.

He was staring at her, heavy with lust. She stopped her slow tease, reached for his jaw and brushed her thumbs over the rough scrape of unshaven cheeks.

"Kate." His voice was broken when it came, and he closed his eyes as if ashamed of it.

She clutched the back of his neck and pushed up on her toes to reach him, her mouth at his eyelids. "I'm going to be more for you than this, I promise. I promise you, Rick. I can be more than this."

His lashes fluttered open against her lips and she took his mouth instead, pressing deep, deep, until he parted for her and she could stroke her tongue inside. Let it be slow, let it be good, let his body encompass hers and let her forget.

Let her get lost in him.

His hands were broad at her back and pulling her in against him, so strong again, so demanding, and she knew-

before she let herself take, she had to give.

"I can be more," she murmured, her hands tugging his shirt. "Let me show you."

* * *

Castle woke to Beckett draped over his back, her cheek pressed at his shoulder blade, the alarm blaring. He reached out from under her and snapped it off, hoped he hadn't broken it. Kate stirred and rolled her face into his skin, her mouth open on a deep breath that shot a jolt straight to his blood.

"Becks, gotta get up."

She huffed and slid off of him, nestling down near his face, her palm scraping down his jaw and curling at his neck. "Hi."

He hummed at her, opened his eyes to study the lines in her face, that slow-dawning realization that today was the day for mourning.

"No one calls me that anymore," she said instead.

"Becks?"

"Mm." She rolled her shoulders and pushed off against his back, climbed over him once more for the bathroom. "I need to shower, get ready. You have clothes for the service here?"

"Yeah," he answered, turned his head to watch her walk away. He liked the loose drape of the tshirt she'd dragged on sometime during the night; he'd scooped it up off the floor when she'd shivered and curled closer.

He got to see it come off again now, the fall of her hair back over her shoulders, her arching spine. She dropped the shirt to the bathroom floor and paused before the shower, reached in to twist the knob. He kept his eyes open and on her, knew he needed to get up and get going, but the warmth of her home was always so very seductive.

"Castle."

He saw she'd turned her head to him, her body in silhouette. She crooked her fingers at him and he slid out of bed and came to her, the bathroom already steaming up.

She took him by the wrist and stepped through the curtain, tugging him after her.

"We only have a few minutes," he murmured, felt her fingers working at his boxers to get rid of them. "Kate, love-"

"We have enough."


	2. Chapter 2

**Close Encounters 3**

* * *

They'd been bad for each other - had been - but they'd been so good too. When he'd gotten off disability and gone back to work, he'd come home to her nearly every night for a few months, been able to disappear into the haven of her body, her bed-

sometimes the comfortable arms of her couch, or a brutal sparring routine, sometimes Chinese takeout while she worked on a case, all the elements spread over the floor.

Sometimes it was just that he got to come home.

Nights he didn't come home, he was in the field anyway. Until their fight a few days ago, he couldn't remember the last time he'd been back to his own apartment.

So he was more at home here in her place. He was grateful to be here. After a shower, he made breakfast and a cup of coffee for himself in the Keurig he'd bought (and she disdained), and then he brewed hers in the fancy espresso machine he'd gotten her when she snubbed her nose at his. When she came out of the bedroom in her dress uniform, her gloves in her hat and cradled against her chest, he handed her a plate of eggs.

"I can't," she said, shaking her head and refusing to take it. He shrugged and downed her plate as well, sipped at his coffee while she had to wait for hers.

"Your hair's falling in the back," he murmured, putting down the mug and coming up behind her at the counter. "Right here." He skimmed her neck with his fingertips, brushed the strands up into the tight bun at her nape.

"I can't get it right," she moaned, bowing her head forward. "Castle. I can't-"

"It's okay," he said quickly, taking her by the shoulders and drawing her back into his chest. "I'll - I can - let me try."

"What?" she choked, half-laughing as she turned towards him. "No, Castle."

He let it go for now. She looked so young in her uniform. He realized there was more in her hat than just her gloves, and he pushed his hands into the cap, brought out her badge and her detective's notebook both. They were small, but-

"You're bringing these? Why?"

She took them back, stuffed them in the cap again. "They mean something to me. My Captain-" She swallowed and shook her head.

"Okay," he said softly, wouldn't begrudge her whatever she needed to get through this day. "But your hair. I can do it. I can help. What is there to lose?"

She put a hand to her forehead and studied him carefully. "Okay. Fine."

* * *

Beckett held very still and closed her eyes.

His hands in her hair, fingers stroking through the strands, combing it into something he could work with - she could tell he'd never done this before, had no idea how to put up the bun.

She had thirty minutes before she needed to leave, before they needed to leave, and if it came to it, she could sweep it back and repin it herself in five.

Let him have twenty-five minutes to try, let her have twenty-five minutes to feel his fingers in her hair, the drugging sensation of his fumbling attempts.

He worked at her scalp, dragged his fingers back through her hair to gather it together, had to keep stroking individual strands as they escaped. She felt her head dip forward in drowsy arousal, fluttered her eyes open to look at him in the mirror.

He wasn't even looking at her; he was studying his progress with a fierce scowl, his eyebrows drawn together and his lips pressed tight like a frustrated little boy. She felt the inclination to smile, but didn't have the muscle or strength to do it, despite the lingering sensation of his fingers.

"Castle," she rasped.

His eyes lifted to the mirror to meet hers, and the connection made her heart skip and stutter.

"I can do it," he said again, but leaned in and brushed his lips to her neck, his hand holding her hair tightly. "Let me try again."

She nodded, couldn't help agreeing when he looked so intent, and she lifted her hand to cup his cheek, nuzzling her nose into the smell of him. Crisp like winter and woods but with the dark tang of smoke and sweat.

His mouth was wet and warm, leaving a mark at her skin when he pulled back. She wanted to watch him, but the feeling of his fingers through her hair once more made her eyes slam shut.

He seemed to get the hang of it, twisted the pony tail tightly at her nape and used the big clip to tuck it under like she'd had it in the beginning. He skimmed the tips of his fingers down her neck as he reached for the bobby pins, gathered a few of them to pin up her bun.

Another kiss at her jaw when he was finished, and even though he'd tried, even though he'd concentrated and his touch was so tender, so soft, it would never do.

The moment she put her hat on, it would all fall apart.

Beckett reached back and snagged his fingers with hers, kissed the sensitive part of his wrist.

"Thanks, Rick."

His answering smile was pleased, boyish, and he lifted a finger to stroke her cheek.

"Now leave me a few minutes. Let me finish getting ready."

He stole a kiss from her lips before letting her go.

She waited a moment, watching him leave, his shoulders so broad and wide in that dark suit, and then she reached back and unraveled her hair.

This time her hands were steady when she scraped it all back.

* * *

This was a terrible day. She had to bury her Captain in a few minutes, stand in front of the mourners - his wife and children, his friends, their fellow officers - and honor the man who'd mentored her, who'd driven her to succeed at the 12th, and who had also, somehow, become so wrapped up in this conspiracy that he'd given his life to it.

The car made the turn into the cemetery, the day baking outside the window but so dark inside. She gripped Castle's fingers tighter, kept her eyes on the headstones as they passed.

This was a terrible day, but somehow Richard Castle had made it a day they shared. His fingers in her hair in front of the mirror, her coffee made and placed in her hands, the way he'd paid attention in the shower.

He'd been silent during the church service, hadn't approached the other NYPD officers, hadn't demanded her hand or her presence, had let her do and be and grieve and console as she could. He still had his sunglasses on in deference to the sun's unobstacled path through the cemetery, but she kept her eyes clear, readable. She hoped he saw the gratitude.

When the car stopped, he opened the door and got out, leaned in to hand her out as well. She felt the sponge of the wet grass under her thick-soled, high-heeled boots and cast a slow glance around as people drifted out of cars towards the fresh grave at the end of the field.

She spotted two of the CIA's team right off - Eastman speaking into his lapel at the head of the car convoy, and another man she didn't know by sight. After some careful scanning, she saw another man with his coat pulled too tightly over his weapon, watching people disperse along the slight rise towards the gravesite.

Beckett moved for the hearse with Castle behind her; she was a pallbearer and they'd already lined up at the back of the black car, waiting on the doors to open. Esposito and Ryan met her eyes with a grim nod, and Ryan did Castle the favor of reaching out to shake his hand.

She glanced behind Castle to the still arriving mourners, the lines of cars stopping along the drive. No one knew how to act, what to say, where to put their hands. She spotted the Montgomery son - Evan - staring back at them, the group of eight men and women who would carry the coffin. Beyond him were his sisters, clutching their mother on either side, and past that tight knot were the friends and family.

The other officers who'd attended were in a cluster about twenty yards past the perimeter of pallbearers. Well, except for just one - a man with his hat pulled low, standing awkwardly away from everyone, a hundred yards or more. He was nearly at the line of cars parked for the funeral. Probably a rookie who didn't feel he belonged with the grieving, come to pay his respects, halfway between the mourners heading up the hill and the cops awaiting the coffin. She admired his courage, was about to make a motion for him to step up with the others, but then she heard the hearse opening behind her.

She turned back to her team and her heart sank as the door swung open and revealed the coffin, the cherry wood and fiberglass, the chrome rivets on the side, the handles that the funeral director eased out into waiting hands.

She clenched her fists, last in the receiving line, and felt the sweat start at her neck, slip down between her breasts. Beckett turned to look at Castle, still standing on the periphery of the pallbearers, and she saw he had his hand up to the wireless IFB in his ear, a frown creasing his face. She paused, heard the slide of the coffin coming towards them, and when her eyes went back to Castle's, he was scanning the horizon, turning his head-

She saw it then, what she hadn't seen before.

The rookie had slipped off. The rookie with those ill-fitting white gloves, not the same style as a real NYPD officer's. The hat pulled low enough to shadow his face.

Where was the rookie now?

She broke the line of pallbearers and headed for Castle to tell him, but just then she saw the flash and flare of a rifle scope in the sun. Castle stepped to one side; she saw him make eye contact with Eastman, shift again, and the flare of the scope came again.

Tracking him.

"Castle," she called out, the thud in her pulse choking her collar around her neck. "Castle, behind you-"

His head was only half-turned towards her when she impacted him, shoving Castle only a step and spinning with the force of her momentum; the gunshot cracked through the still and too-bright air and she felt its echo in her bones.

Castle staggered to one side, his hands gripping her even as her chest caved in and her legs stopped holding her up.

The sky spun dizzying out.

* * *

She crumpled in his arms.

"Eastman!" he yelled, one arm behind her neck, sinking to his knees as she dragged him down, her hat rolling off in the grass, the other hand pulling his gun as he crouched over Beckett.

He saw his team scrambling towards the shooter, a man disappearing in uniform over the hill past the drive-

"I need help! I need paramedics," he bellowed, glanced down at Beckett.

Oh God. Oh _God._

Blood. Face white, lips blue, eyes fluttering shut.

He dropped his weapon and cradled her body against him.

"Beckett. Come on. Come on, Kate, stay with me."

He patted the side of her face to rouse her, ran his hand down her back and jerked at the slick, warm wet. Blood slicked his palm, soaked his fingers. She'd been shot in the back. Her heart. Lungs.

"Beckett. Come on," he growled.

Her eyes flared open, her body convulsing, but she didn't see him. Her mouth worked and he hovered close, lips ghosting hers, pressing his hand to the blood pouring out of her entry wound.

"Kate, love-"

Her lashes drifted, fluttered open, sank again.

"No. No, come on, Kate. Come on, love, you have to stay with me. Just stay with me, Kate."

A breath groaned out of her body and he rocked forward, gripping her tighter, but her next breath didn't come.

"Out of my way, you get out of my way, or so help me God, I will-"

He was jerked back by strong hands, a woman slipping into his place, fingers and hands expert, practiced, _medical_-

He turned and Esposito was letting him go, eyes glittering, and Castle jerked forward to fall on his knees at Kate's head.

"Field trained," he croaked out. "Tell me what to do."

The fierce woman looked up at him, tears streaming down her face, and he felt it twist in his guts.

"She's not _breathing_," he growled at her. "Tell me what to do."

She grabbed his hands and pressed them to Beckett's sternum. "Chest compressions."

He laced his fingers together and began CPR.

"Come on, Kate, come on."

* * *

He was shoved into a cramped corner of the ambulance while she bled and bled and bled.

The paramedics worked at the bullet wound in her back, that doctor who'd pushed him away in the cemetery there as well, but it was Castle alone on this side of Beckett. She was propped on her side, unresponsive, and a terrible and lonely desperation clawed in his chest.

He saw the awkward jut of her detective's notebook under her, reached out to tug it free. Her badge came with it and he gripped them both, his mouth dry and his throat closing up. Her hat was gone, lost in the cemetery, and he didn't know how these had made it with her. At the movement of a paramedic, her hair fell free in a sudden collapse and he watched the pins drop to the floor of the ambulance as if in slow motion.

They were bloodied, and he knew - knew terribly - it was because of his hands, because he'd held her head with his blood-stained hands.

Oh, God.

He jerked forward to grab one of her hands, clammy and limp in his palm, and still his fingers were unable to warm it up. He stroked the hair off her face with his thumb because it was the only part of him that wasn't stained with her blood.

He couldn't stop staring at her.

"I hate you for this," he rasped, his head bowing over the cold skin of her forehead.

The paramedics were working, there was a frantic and barely-restrained panic in the woman doctor's voice as she kept the compress against Beckett's back, and he recognized that they were only trying to keep her alive long enough to make it to the hospital.

The scattered and schizophrenic rhythm of her heartbeat on the monitor made him hunch closer, his breath over her cheek, her mouth, as if he could remind her what it felt like.

"Enough," he husked, his hand clutching the tangled knot of her hair. "Enough of this. Be alive for me, Beckett. You have to live."

The ambulance screamed on into the cloying, suffocating summer.

* * *

The blood drained out of his face the moment his eyes landed on Jim Beckett.

Her father was grey and washed out, the life gone from his movements, sitting down painfully in a waiting room chair and putting his head in his hands.

He hadn't even seen Castle.

Kevin Ryan moved and sat down two seats over from Jim; the older man's head came up to greet the detective and in that moment, noticed Castle as well.

"Rick."

_Rick. _Kate's name for him. His hands went numb; he felt sick, but he came forward as Jim rose to his feet. She must've been talking to her father about him, more than he thought, for Jim to use that name so familiarly. He'd been Richard at the cabin.

"Sir," he said, arms awkwardly at his side, not sure what to do.

"That hers?"

He glanced down at his hands and saw he was still clutching her badge, her thin leather notebook. "Yes," he croaked out.

"I gave her that." Jim's fingers reached for the notebook.

The door swung open and Castle jerked around to look, but it was just another cop coming to sit vigil. He let out a shaky breath and shifted his eyes back to Jim, saw the older man had done the same sudden movement toward the doors.

Jim sighed and gestured to the chairs, didn't try to take the notebook or badge from him. "Sit down, Rick."

"Sir, I-"

"I said sit down."

He dropped to the hard plastic seat beside her father, swiped his hand down his face and cleared his throat to choke back the rush of grief.

"She was pushing you out of the way, how I hear it."

His chest burned, he couldn't force the words out.

"Ever since she graduated the Academy," Jim started. And then he didn't finish.

Castle already knew. It was the look Jim had given Kate when she'd taken Castle to her father's cabin after he'd been stabbed by Coonan. It was the way he'd taken the news of Castle's work at the CIA, as if he'd been fearful for years and this was nothing new.

"I never. . ." Castle let out a long breath and fisted his hands, gripping the notebook and badge so tight they cut into his palm.

The door swung open again and he jerked his head toward the sound. A man in scrubs was coming through, the mask tugged down around his neck, rubbing his hands together like he'd just scrubbed them clean.

"You're all here for Detective Beckett?" the man said, glancing around the room full of cops.

Castle stood, felt Jim at his side, and he paused. But Jim nudged him forward with a hand at his elbow, and they both stepped up to the doctor.

"I'm Jim, her father," Jim said, taking the hand the doctor offered. "And this is her - fiance - Rick."

His stomach rolled.

He had, of course, asked her to marry him once. He supposed that counted.

* * *

She'd pulled through surgery, the doctors working successfully to repair a tear in her aorta, her surgeon, Dr. Davidson, giving them the news himself. She'd be on the ventilator until the anesthesia wore off, and when she woke (_when_ Castle insisted to himself) they'd take her off of the machine and let her breathe on her own.

Her father was allowed fifteen minutes with her while Castle sat in the waiting room as NYPD officers filed in and out. His hands were trembling - adrenaline letdown, that's all - and he had a hundred alerts on his phone from Eastman and the team.

His father was on Air Force One with the President, somewhere over Bali, otherwise Castle was certain he'd be hearing from him as well.

But he was waiting on _her_ father. He wanted to see the man's face after he'd been inside with Kate. Because then he'd know.

Esposito came back in and motioned to Ryan; the other detective stood and hurried towards his partner, the two of them with their heads close together. He saw Ryan's eyes involuntarily shift to Castle before darting away.

His brain clicked on, started spinning.

Castle checked his phone again, scrolled through some of the alerts only to get bogged down in the multiple instances of conversation replies and copies. Palming his phone, he stood and slipped out of the waiting room, headed for the front lobby and the relative quiet.

He called Eastman. His partner.

"Castle, finally," the agent answered him. "We got the guy. NYPD tried to take him, but it was one our guys who caught him. So he's ours. We got him."

A fierce and brutal need burned through him and he had to consciously loosen his grip on the phone. "Where are we putting him?"

"Leaving it up to you. Hey, man, how's your detective?"

"She had surgery - repair her heart. On a vent, but. . ."

"She'll make it." Eastman's voice was that familiar, quiet intensity. Certainty in every tone. "Where you want the shooter?"

"Got a name for him?"

"Cole Maddox. Worked in the same unit as the dead guys from the hangar."

He grit his teeth. "Hal Lockwood, that group."

"You got it."

"Put Maddox in the Warehouse. I'll do his interrogation myself."

"You got it, Castle. Your girl will pull through. She's a tough one."

He couldn't push words out, just ended the call and sank back against the wall. When he was in control again, he turned for the waiting room and saw Esposito and Ryan eyeing him.

He didn't give a shit what they thought of him. Castle had the shooter; he had Beckett's shooter.


	3. Chapter 3

**Close Encounters 3**

* * *

Jim sat beside him wordlessly, but Castle recognized the signs of grief and fatigue. It was actually a good sign; her father's reaction meant he felt that Kate was going to make it and he'd unconsciously given himself permission to fall apart.

Castle reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys, worked the big brass one off the ring, and then the smaller silver one as well. He held them up and then pressed them into Jim's hand.

"Those are the keys to her place," he started, had to clear his throat several times. "Don't know where her stuff is, couldn't find what they'd done with - but that big one will get you in the main door to the building and then her door is this one. Clean sheets in the linen closet off the hall."

"What about you?" Jim said hoarsely. "I don't want to kick you out of your own - own home."

He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Her father thought - had Beckett said - Jim assumed they were living together? He knew Kate and her father talked on the phone every Sunday and okay, yes, he was at her place every time he was back in the States, but-

"I won't bother you," Castle said finally.

"It's not a bother; I'm the one who's a guest. Where are you going to be?"

"At work," he gruffed, lifted his head to her father. "I'm going to get to the bottom of this. Once and for all."

* * *

"You've got the sniper," a voice called out.

Castle stopped in the hallway, mere feet from the exit doors, and turned slowly back to Kevin Ryan. He let nothing show on his face.

Ryan stood his ground. "You've got the man who shot our boss, our _partner_, and the damn CIA won't let us anywhere near him."

"You're playing with the big boys, Ryan." He turned back for the exit and found Esposito in his way.

"We're coming with you."

"No. You're not."

"Yes," Ryan said quietly. "We are."

He looked between them two of them, crossed his arms over his chest so the blood stains at his cuffs showed clearly, the grip of his weapon at his hip gleamed dully in the fluorescent lights. "No, you're not. You know why? Because the things I'm going to do to this man you can't be a part of."

Ryan's face flashed, but Esposito's only resolved. Still, they didn't back down.

"I don't see nothing," Esposito said, his voice a growl. "You, Ryan?"

"Deaf and dumb and blind."

"You're taking us with you," Espo finished. "We protect our own."

Castle kept his eyes on Esposito as the dominant, stared until the cold in his eyes leached out into the very air, stared until the detective's nostrils flared. He wasn't backing down.

Castle shifted his gaze to Ryan. "Fine. You're with me. Esposito," he started, cutting off the other man's furious protest. "You stay here. Outside her door. No one but Jim or that doctor, Davidson, goes in or out. You got me? No one."

Esposito's chest filled and warrior came into his eyes. "Don't think you're ordering me around, Castle."

He pushed past the man, headed for the doors; he could feel their indecision behind him.

"Ryan? You coming?"

And then he heard the detective running to catch up.

Esposito might be a self-important punk, but he'd do as Castle said and stick right outside Beckett's door like a guard dog from hell.

Of that, he had no doubt.

* * *

"I don't think this is a good idea," Deleware said, apparently trying to go for a whisper.

Castle walked up on Agent Deleware outside the holding room of the Warehouse, Eastman the one getting the lecture.

"You don't think?" Castle said, pushing his hands in his pockets so neither of them could see their betraying tremors. "I do. More effective because he knows I won't stop."

"But you will stop," Eastman said easily.

"Sure."

Sure.

Deleware was young enough that he kept his mouth shut, formal protest lodged for the record, and Castle flexed his fingers as Eastman reached for the door.

"We've got him hooked up to the live feed. All yours, Castle."

He nodded and rolled his head on his neck, mentally reviewed his options. "Whatever I say, do, whatever happens, you don't let Detective Ryan in here. Got me?"

"Course not," Eastman huffed. "He stays with me in the observation room. We'll be monitoring the feed."

Castle took a breath and unrolled his shirt sleeves, let the bloodied cuffs dangle open at his wrists before folding them up just once, visible and bright. A badge. He scrubbed his hands at his face, felt the stubble already peppering his cheeks, knew his eyes were still bloodshot.

Perfect.

Eastman gave a soft chuckle. "The half untucked shirt is a nice touch too."

Training alone kept him from glancing down. His dress shirt was half untucked? He hadn't realized. He-

He was closer to the edge than they knew.

But she'd pulled through the surgery, and her father had seen her for a few minutes.

"All right," he said gruffly. "Show's on."

* * *

He came in wordlessly, sat down across from Cole Maddox and leaned back in the chair, his eyes on the man.

He'd shot Kate.

Dark hair, a mean face with eyes that squinted, a surly mouth. As Castle studied him, Maddox rolled his eyes with a show of unconcerned nonchalance. But his mouth tightened, and that betrayed him.

"Shitface, right?" Castle said suddenly.

Maddox was good - only the very slight lift of an eyebrow to show his startlement at being called that old nickname.

"I was there," Castle continued. "In Afghanistan. Training with your unit. They called you Shitface because the way you hold your mouth - looks like you're constipated all the time."

Castle slowly cracked a grin, let the bloodlust show in his eyes. It wasn't hard to do, and he wasn't entirely faking it.

He'd shot Kate.

Castle had felt her blood soaking through his hand, her body weakening in his arms.

"So. Shitface. What's it gonna be?"

Maddox was silent. Castle checked the observation mirror for the green light, but it didn't go on. Maddox wasn't rattled.

Castle folded his arms across his chest, let Maddox see the blood on his shirt.

"You shot my girlfriend, you know."

Green light flickered to life just past Maddox's head. A small pinpoint and then it was gone. Meant the guys in the observation room had picked up on a biofeedback tell - increased heart rate or sweat, something.

"You. Shot. Kate."

Green light again.

Castle leaned in slowly, let his eyes go dead. "You do me a favor, Cole. Stay silent. Stay so very silent, my man. Because I am going to enjoy this."

Green light.

Castle put his elbows on the table and let his breath slide in shallowly, harsh in the narrow holding room, let his eyes wander Maddox like a piece of meat waiting to be butchered.

"Your friend Lockwood - we already put a round in his gut, bled him out on the floor. Maddox. I am so looking forward to doing you next."

He stood up slowly, kept his eyes on Maddox long enough for the green light to flash once more.

And then he walked out of that room.

He almost didn't.

* * *

Ryan looked freaked. Good. Ryan didn't know him, so that meant it'd been convincing.

Eastman looked completely at ease, but Eastman always looked at ease. Deleware seemed grudgingly respectful.

"You lit him up pretty good," Del said first, crossing his arms as they convened in the hallway outside.

"He thinks I'm barely hanging on, unstable." Castle shrugged. But. "For now, we'll let him sit and think too much. Keep the leads attached, no one goes in there but me. I am his only link to the world outside that box."

Ryan shifted on his feet and Castle turned to him. Ryan said nothing, but he seemed to draw himself up, like he was making himself taller.

Good. Ryan was on his way.

"I'm going to do some more research on his unit-"

His phone vibrated harshly in his pocket and Castle froze just an instant, a talon clawing his chest. And then it released and he could reach his hand in and pull the phone out, check the message.

"I have to get back to the hospital," he rasped, swallowing hard. When he looked up, Eastman was studying him but Deleware and Ryan were carefully not meeting his eyes.

He pivoted back down the hall towards the exit, felt Ryan dogging his heels.

"No one in that room but me," he called back, his guts churning.

She was off the vent.

* * *

When he came in the room, she was propped on her side with her knees curled up, her hair in a mess around her head, face waxy with blue tinges around her eyes. But she gave him a weak, crumbling smile and his words deserted him.

Her throat worked but she didn't open her mouth. Her father had warned him she wouldn't be able to speak after coming off the vent.

Her eyebrows knit, a flash of pain simmering in those dark eyes, and it pulled him to her bedside in a moment. Castle reached out a hand and cupped her face, fell apart when she leaned into his touch.

"Kate. God, Kate-"

She swallowed hard and pressed her lips to his palm, her eyes closing. He felt the weakness in the wobble of her head on her neck, the fingers that closed around his wrist to hang on to him.

Castle couldn't resist, had to lean in and press his forehead to hers, feel the upsweep of her lashes as she blinked and breathed. His head rested on the back of her hospital bed, their noses brushing, and the heat from his body seemed to escape him and slowly travel into her.

She barely moved, silent and hardly present, a faded thing, but he kept hold of her like he could keep her here, keep her with him by just his touch.

He had so many things to say and he knew she'd have questions, but he couldn't push words past the ache in his throat, the ice beginning to melt in his chest. He felt the moment her fingers lost their grip and fell to the crook of his arm, her breathing slow and steady and low.

She was asleep.

He couldn't bring himself to move away, his forehead against hers, his hand cradling her face, and his fingers buried in her grimy, tangled hair. He touched his lips lightly to hers and finally pulled back, got to his knees on the floor beside her bed, completely unable to stop touching her, watching her, his hand on her so she couldn't possibly slip away.

* * *

He answered his phone with a harsh rasp of his name, had to clear his throat afterwards.

"Castle?" Eastman asked. "You know you left Maddox in the box with strict instructions on his care."

"Yeah," he got out, his eyes on Kate. He wasn't supposed to have his phone on in here.

"Including no feeding or watering."

"Shit." He had to-

Kate was asleep, her father was right outside the door waiting on his turn, and-

"I'll. . .be there in an hour."

"You. . .is Beckett-"

"She's off the vent. She's asleep."

"You should come on in, Castle."

He nodded even though he knew Eastman couldn't see it. "An hour."

"An hour," Eastman repeated. "Your boy's getting ticked."

"Good."

* * *

Castle placed the plastic cup of water on the table, his eyes dead, kept in mind the burning image of Kate Beckett bleeding in his arms, the life flickering out of her eyes.

He put his palms flat on the table as Maddox regarded the water.

"If she dies, I'm going to enjoy torturing you."

Green light. Maddox reached for the water and drank slowly, the light dimming past his head and then extinguishing.

Castle leaned back, let the enthusiasm flush over his face in barely a moment before he controlled it agian.

"Slowly. Piece by piece. Bring you back to consciousness only to do it all over again."

No light. Fine. Castle watched Maddox replace the glass, fold his hands in his lap, adopt a neutral face. He let himself - just so Maddox could see it - imagine the ways he could break this man. He'd start slowly, like he'd said, go for the tender places like teeth and in between the toes. Broken fingers were nice, but a guy like Maddox wouldn't even budge.

Teeth and toes. Those were-

Green light.

He smiled, let his heart rate pick up. "Your NSA friends aren't coming for you."

Light faded. Interesting.

"You're all mine. All mine, Cole. The guys that are usually back there-?" He nodded to the blacked out window that allowed the agents to observe the interrogation. "They aren't there, Cole. You know why?"

"I can guess," Maddox said wryly, lifting an eyebrow.

"You know who I am. You know who my father is. I own this place, Cole. I run it. And I can do anything I want."

Yellow light. Well, damn, now they were getting somewhere. Yellow meant a reaction that they couldn't identify, couldn't place on the chart.

"So let's start small, Cole, my friend. Where'd you get the sniper rifle?"

He was, of course, met with silence.

"That's not fair," Castle said with a chuckle. "I already know the answer to that one." He smiled widely, let it spread across his face, and then - as they'd prearranged - his phone vibrated in his pocket.

He let that moment in the hall wash over him again, a message from the hospital, the not knowing, and he made a small production out of glancing to the screen of his phone and shoving the chair back.

He stood and left the room, saw from the corner of his eye that the yellow light had come on again.

Cole Maddox knew something. Oh yes. He did.

* * *

In the hallway, he gripped Ryan by the shoulder and headed him down towards Castle's temporary work station inside the Warehouse. "I need you to do some research for me, Ry."

"No one calls me that."

"Well, now someone does." He opened the door with his access card and went inside the room. "Maddox was in a Special Forces unit with the dead black ops team from that hangar."

"The team that killed Montgomery," Ryan breathed, eyes narrowing.

"That's right. Same team as Coonan-"

"You two swept that right up, you know. What I have on Coonan is very little-"

"Well, now you have it all." Castle pushed him into the seat in front of the computer and tapped the manila folder next to it. "In here. I want to know who they all had in common. Coonan, Maddox, and the leader of the team in that hangar-"

"Lockwood."

"Right."

"Lockwood killed Raglan and McCallister too, you think?"

"Not think. Know. We know he did. Just didn't get a chance to share that with the NYPD."

"Of course not," Ryan said darkly, turning his head to look at the computer.

"This is how we can help her," Castle said suddenly, let the emotion back into his voice. "This is how we get this guy. Research."

"Research."

"Who they have in common, who they hung out with, the units associated with theirs-"

"I know how to research. Better than you do, or so Beckett says."

So Beckett said? Really?

And why did that set up a stupid, chanting rhythm in his blood? Because she was talking about him with her boys.

"She might be right about my research skills," he said finally. "I'm going to let Maddox think there's some kind of crisis at the hospital - he seems to really make that connection between me and Beckett. Either he's disgusted at my lack of professionalism, or he really is afraid it makes me unstable, hard to tell. But I'll play it for all it's worth."

"You know," Ryan said, flexing his fingers over the keyboard. "You're convincing me."

"That I'm unstable."

"Yes."

"Good. Because it's a near thing."

Castle reached into his back pocket and pulled out a key card. "Temporary ID and login is on here, use it to get around the building, access to the database. If you leave for dinner or to meet up with someone, fine - just use it to get back into the underground lot."

"What about Espo?"

"Tell him whatever the hell you want. But Ry?"

The man grit his teeth and lifted his eyes to Castle.

"You're my asset. Not him. The information can flow out to the NYPD, but not officially, you get me?"

"I'm not your asset."

"You are now."

"This is how you tricked Beckett into it too, isn't it?"

"One and the same. Seems like you NYPD detectives are suckers for an interrogation."

Before Ryan could curse him, Castle left the room.

He wanted to get back to Kate.

* * *

He exchanged nods with Jim outside her room but the older man stopped him with a hand on his sleeve. Esposito hovered like a good guard dog.

"She told me to go home and sleep. So I'm. . .I'll sleep at her apartment, since you offered. But please feel free-"

"You're fine," Castle said, shaking his head. "I've got work. We. . .caught the guy, Jim."

Her father froze, his eyes on Castle, his hand clutching tighter at the shirt that Castle still hadn't changed out of. He needed to do that. Leave it at the Warehouse to keep up the show.

Not here, not now.

"You caught him." There was relish in his voice, and a breathlessness that Castle couldn't explain. Fear?

"That's why I keep disappearing," he explained.

"Are you the one in charge of questioning him?" Jim's eyes went hard and flat, but Castle saw now that it was fear. Fear for _Castle. _"Are you alone in there with him, Rick?"

"Yes, sir," he answered honestly. "But-"

"Don't let it ruin you, son. Don't let it control you. Be better than that."

Unlike Kate. That's what he was afraid of, her father was. Because he'd seen his daughter disappear under the weight of her mother's case, and now Castle was poised on the edge.

"Sir. It's monitored. I'm in control."

"You've been the one to keep Katie afloat. I just - if you drown in it, who does she have?" Jim shook his head and passed a hand over his eyes. "Sorry. I'm - tired. I'm going to the apartment. I'll leave you."

Castle caught him by the elbow before he could go. "She has me. I promise. She has me."

* * *

This time when Castle came back to her, she had a smile for him and her voice. "Hey, there."

It wasn't strong, didn't exactly sound like her, but it was there. He looked sad though, his face tired and strained, and he was still wearing that bloodied funeral shirt.

But he smiled at the sound of her voice and came closer. "Hey, you. Good to hear your voice."

She was still propped on her side to avoid resting on her back, where the wound was, and she'd pressed her hands down between her knees for warmth. It wasn't helping much though.

Kate rested her head against the raised hopsital bed, took a long breath. "Crawl in with me, Rick."

"Don't know that I should," he said softly. He hovered at her side, not touching, an excruciating distance between them now that she could speak.

"Please," she whispered.

His shoulders slumped and he came in, pressed his mouth to her cheekbone, her jaw, skimming his fingers at her neck and shoulders.

"How, tell me how, Kate. I don't want to hurt you."

She tugged her hand out from between her knees. "On the good drugs. Just, lie down right here with me."

"I'll have to move you over," he murmured, fingers curling through her hair. She looked a wreck, she knew it.

"Move me over," she answered. She needed her head on his chest and the ease of sinking down into him.

Castle shook his head but sat on the bed at her hip, drew his arm behind her knees, the other to the back of her neck, and slid in beside her in one movement.

And it hurt, despite the good drugs, yeah it hurt. But when she slowly slid her legs down his, shifted so she laid on him, her stomach pressed to his hip, the pain rippled and faded to a dull roar.

"I'm not sure where to put my hands," he whispered at the top of her head, mouth against her hair.

"Here," she murmured, wriggling her fingers at his side. Moving her arms up or down was excruciating and she didn't think she could do it again.

He slipped his hand in hers and brought her fingers to his lips. Kate couldn't stop the grunt of pain, but she couldn't pull her arm back into her side either. Castle clutched her hand harder and she rolled her face into his collarbone.

"Can't lift - my arm, Castle, please-"

He jerked her hand back down, tucking it in at her side. "Sorry, sorry, shit, Kate, I shouldn't be-"

"Don't you dare move," she growled, her eyes closed as she breathed through it.

"I'm hurting you."

"I already hurt. Just let me have this," she scraped out, swallowing against the urge to cry.

"Kate," he whispered.

"You're warm," she sighed, felt the tears slipping through her lashes. What could she do? The drugs made her so tired.

"Are you crying?"

"No," she grunted, turned her face deeper into his neck. "Shut up. I hate you."

She felt him laugh under her, the squeeze of his hand in hers, and then his other arm so very gingerly came around her waist, his fingers gripping her hipbone.

Ever since she'd woken up, she felt like she could come apart at a touch. But now that she had him under her, his warmth seemed to be melding all those pieces back together.

His hand came down to the back of her thigh, drew her leg up a little more. She hummed in relief - it seemed to somehow help - and then felt his fingers stroking through her hair again, at her neck, warm and solid and heavy.

"Keep doing that," she breathed out, the tears squeezed out and sealing her cheek to his shirt. "And change your shirt, Castle. You smell like blood."

He laughed again, that same grateful, breathless thing, and his mouth came to her forehead, coasting there, skimming his lips at her skin.

"You gonna fall asleep or just keep ordering me around?"

"I can do both," she muttered, but her eyes were heavy, her body sinking even as the touch of his hands knit her together once more.

"I'm sure you can."

"Stay."

"I wouldn't leave you."


	4. Chapter 4

**Close Encounters 3**

* * *

Agent Castle had set his phone to receive his alerts - his regular work and updates on Ryan's progress, as well as the biofeedback monitor's automated reports on Maddox's condition. He kept the phone on the bedside stand so he could read it without moving her much, her body so compact and drawn in against his.

When he'd shifted to first reach for a call, she'd moaned in her sleep and roused long enough for tears to fill her eyes, still unseeing and caught in the layers of confusion from the drugs. So he quit trying to do anything other than be the body pillow she needed, his mouth against the top of her head and his hand curled warmly at her neck.

She seemed to sink deeper into sleep when he had a grip on her like that, like she needed to be weighed down. He didn't think the painkillers were agreeing with her too well, and he wanted to talk to her doctor, or maybe her friend - the ME, Lanie - find out if she was having some kind of reaction to the drugs.

Another alert flashed on his screen and he glanced at it - Ryan again, saying he was going home and would return tomorrow. It was getting to be late; Castle couldn't remember how long he'd been here. The nurse on shift kept coming in to check Kate's vitals, record her blood pressure and heart rate, once to change the IV, and even though she shot him dirty looks for flagrantly violating hospital protocol, all he'd had to do was show his CIA credentials and the administration hadn't said another word.

He was staying.

Speak of the devil. The door opened and Castle braced himself for another silent staring contest, but it was a new one - dark-skinned, wide hands, blue scrubs.

"How are we doing?" she asked quietly, scratching something down on Beckett's chart.

"Good," he answered shortly, tried not to feel like he was doing something wrong.

"You know, that's gonna hurt her in the morning."

He stiffened. "What?"

"How'd you like to spend twelve hours sleeping on a sack of bones?"

Castle felt the grin lifting one side of his mouth, went ahead and let it loose. "You have a point. But she said she was cold-"

"I'll get her another blanket. Shift her off and lower the bed. She shouldn't be upright this long anyway, not with her blood pressure being so low."

Her blood pressure was low? Why hadn't the other nurse _said_ anything? Castle gripped the back of Kate's neck in one hand and her thigh in the other, slowly eased his body out from under hers.

"That's good, better. I'm gonna lower the bed so she won't be cramped up like that, but you can stick close, Handsome. She's gonna want to see you."

"Yeah," his voice graveled. "I'll stick close."

He felt the head of the bed lowering and kept a careful hold on Kate, made sure she eased down into position. It stopped just short of lying completely flat, but the nurse was right. She looked a lot more comfortable.

"She's been waking up every now and then," he confessed, studying Kate's profile in the light coming from the sink. He stroked his hand to her shoulder and finally looked at the nurse. "She's - it's not crying. Not exactly. But-"

"It's normal. Anesthesia can make our reactions a little whacky."

"She's not sad?" he asked quickly. "I mean. It's just the drugs?"

"Handsome, I think you gotta give her a chance to come out of it. She was on the vent just twelve hours ago."

He glanced back down to Kate, but still- "She was joking with me. But she was in pain, and she had tears in her eyes. And then it happened again, but she was sleeping. She was crying in her sleep."

When he looked up, he could tell by the nurse's face that he was getting pathetic.

"It's just the drugs they give to put people under for surgery. It's supposed to depress the system."

He nodded, but damn it, the tears were catching; his throat was closing up and his vision was starting to swim.

"She's gonna be just fine," the nurse said, and one of her large hands came to his on the railing, patted him. "Give her some time to breathe on her own, though. Okay? Get her bearings."

"But I can stay?" he said gruffly, cleared his throat again when his voice wavered.

"You can stay. Let me get her another blanket. You should sleep too, you know. I'm here all night. I won't let her go."

Something eased, as if the broken edges were no longer rubbing against the soft places in his chest, and he gave the nurse a grateful smile. "I'm Rick."

"Amesha," she answered, winking at him. "Nice to meet you, Rick. I hear you're CIA."

"Don't let it get around, huh?" he said back, giving her a slow smile. He should never have done it, but he couldn't care less anymore. Let them all know. "Thank you, Amesha."

"Any time," she said quietly, already backing out of Kate's room.

Castle laid back down on the bed and propped his head up with his hand, drew up the thin blanket to her lower back. Her arms were pressed in at her sides, her hair falling around her face, so he reached out and stroked it back, couldn't help cupping her jaw and resting his fingers at her neck.

Where her pulse beat, slow and steady.

"Kate," he whispered, putting his head down beside hers so he could watch the pale pink pearl of her lips, the dark stain of her eyebrows. "I love you, Kate."

He pressed his forehead to hers, nuzzling close, and when the nurse returned with a blanket, he was too tired to open his eyes. He felt it being spread over them both, the gentle hand at his shoulder, and he thought this was what it was like.

That's what it was always supposed to have been like.

No wonder Kate wanted it back, so very badly.

Her mother.

* * *

Kate woke to the night nurse brushing cool fingers at her wrist. Her chest ached, her back ached, and then her confusion cleared and she realized the woman was trying to get at her IV.

"Sorry," she slurred and made the mistake of rolling to get her arm free, felt the agony stab through her like a pitchfork. "Ah, shhhhit." The solid bulk of Castle was in front of her, and she leaned her head into his shoulder, pulled her knees up as if that could help.

"Painful, I know. I changed your IV bag, but honey, I'm afraid the line has come out. Let me see."

"Can't move my arm," she groaned, the rapid flutter of her heart making her skin break out in sweats, clammy and sick.

"Yes, you can. I'll help," the nurse answered, already untangling the IV line from the covers.

She nodded into the pillow and let the nurse rock her to her bad side, untrapping her arm and drawing it out so the woman could look at it.

"There we go, good job. Look. It's gotten pulled out. Let me-"

Kate grunted but it was just the tape being ripped off her arm, and the way her body moved side to side shot pain up through her shoulder blades and into her neck.

"There we go. Didn't even feel it, did you?"

Right.

"Now I'll tape it down a little better and let you get back to sleep."

When the nurse was done, Kate sucked in a ragged breath and kept her body tightly curled, her left arm mostly immobile, the right now with the IV freshly attached. It was awkward, having to lie on her stomach with her arm out, but after that contortion, she couldn't imagine moving.

"I see you got your man here," the nurse said, a smile in her voice that Kate couldn't see. Not with her face practically hidden in Castle's shoulder.

"Yeah," she scraped out, shifting her head so she could watch the nurse wash her hands at the sink. "Yeah, I wouldn't let him leave."

"He's worried about you."

She hummed and tried to swallow past the thick, dry feeling in her throat. She turned her head back to Castle and curled her hand around his bicep.

"All right, honey. I'll let you sleep. Press the button if you need anything."

When the room was quiet again, she fought to open her eyes, a thick desolation sweeping over her in a wave. She clutched Castle tighter, pressed her nose deeper into his skin so she could breathe him in.

It didn't help. She was laid out on a hospital bed with a GSW in her back, she didn't know who or what, she couldn't move to save her life, and her mother's murderer seemed further away than ever.

This might never end. She might never know.

And it might kill everyone she loved.

* * *

Kate choked through nightmares, curled in at the agony, felt hands pulling her apart, ripping her apart, and she yelled and came awake to his face hovering over hers.

"Kate, you need to wake up, love, just breathe and-" He stopped, stroked her hair back from her face. "Hey there, hey. A dream, just a dream. Amesha told me the anesthesia will probably give you some bad ones."

She blinked and swallowed, tried to clear her head. "Am-what?"

"The night nurse, Amesha. She's good - I had a lot of questions and she helped."

"She came in," Kate gruffed. "During the night." She jerked as the pain stabbed hard in her back. "I need to sit up. Castle, I need-"

"Got you, I got you," he said, his fingers gripping at her neck. He was strong enough to ease her upright, and he also raised the head of the bed. Her breath caught in her chest at the pull in her muscles, but he settled her on her side and it seemed marginally better.

"Thank you," she whispered, her arms pulled into her chest. "Thank you."

"Don't," he said, fingers brushing her cheeks, in her hair, at her shoulder as he stood at her bedside. "Don't thank me, Kate. Don't thank me. Is there anything you need? Anything I can get you?"

She pressed her hand into the thin hospital mattress, tried to swallow down the sense of overwhelming exhaustion. "Tell me what's going on. Have you caught the shooter?"

"I got him, Kate. We got him at the cemetery."

She tracked her eyes to his, and he reached out and touched her again, scraped her hair back over her ear. She blinked. "You got him."

"He's in CIA custody."

She sucked in a long breath that hurt, it hurt, but it was the first clean breath she'd had since. . .since Montgomery had been shot.

"Kate-"

"What else?" she said quietly, unfurled her fingers to him. He caught the tips, drew her hand slowly towards him as if he was testing her range of motion.

Oh. He was. Look at that. Sneaky bastard.

He gave her a flickering grin and pressed the back of her hand to his chest. "Doing good."

"What else, Castle?" She flicked her finger out at his shirt, catching the buttons. "I thought I told you to change this shirt."

"Didn't want to leave you."

"That's sweet but kinda disgusting."

"You're feeling better."

She grinned and bit her bottom lip. "Yeah, actually. Your nurse came in last night and fixed my IV. I'm not sure how long I went without drugs, but long enough to hurt."

"Without?" he said, fingers clenching around hers. "What happened to the IV?"

"Came out. You never finished telling me what happened, Agent. Stop trying to change the subject."

He was still standing at her bedside, regarding her like a fragile thing, so she tugged on the button of his shirt, trying to catch his attention, and it popped open.

Castle huffed out a laugh, glanced down to his open shirt. "Well then. Either you're hot for my body or you _really _want me to change."

"Your choice which it is," she murmured, managed to get her finger tucked into his shirt, her nail against his skin.

He choked and pulled her hand away, a little too fast for her, but she kept that off her face.

"Castle. What else."

"Nothing so far, Kate. Just - trying to get answers. Working on him."

"But you're here."

"All part of the plan, sweetheart."

"Like hell."

He laughed and came closer, stroking his hand through her hair again. She sighed at the movement, knew it had to so dirty by now, couldn't believe he still wanted to touch it. Couldn't believe how much he touched _period_. Always touching, his lips at her forehead, fingers in her hair, hovering. He'd never been so. . .tender before. So cradling. Like she was precious, made of glass. She hated it; she adored it. Hard to know how to feel.

"It is the plan, actually. Maddox won't break, but I might be able to read him."

"Yeah?" Maddox. She rolled the name around on her tongue.

"Cole Maddox. That's his name - the sniper. He's ex-Special Forces-"

"Like Coonan," she broke in, meeting his eyes.

"Same unit. And the man who killed Montgomery - Lockwood? Him too."

"The NSA and Special Forces," she said softly, curled her arm tighter into her chest. He still held her other hand trapped in his. "Castle, sit down. Making my neck hurt."

He huffed and came closer, put his hip against the bed. She debated pushing herself back, but no. She couldn't.

"Move me," she said. "So you can sit."

He shook his head but did as she asked; it hurt, a lot actually, but she let out a long breath as he settled in beside her. He pulled one leg up, left the other on the floor. His hand came to the top of her head, scratched her scalp.

That felt good. Let him be always touching. Just a moment of pleasure in the ache of her body.

"Cole Maddox," she said, moved her arm slowly to rest her hand at his thigh.

"I'm working on it, Kate."

"Don't cut me out of this again," she said quietly. "Castle, not now. I need-"

"You need to get better."

"Don't cut me out. This is exactly why-" She growled and closed her eyes, felt his fingers work through her hair.

"Why we fought," he said finally. "I know. And I'm not trying to keep anything from you. I just need you to get better, focus on recov-"

"The best way to help me recover is tell me what's going on. I need to know. I can't rest if I don't know, Castle."

"My little control freak."

She was startled into a laugh, tilted her head back to look at him. "You drive me crazy."

"I know. And you love it."

"I hate you," she sighed. "You're going to dole it out, piece by piece, aren't you?"

"Basically. You gonna get up and walk around? Nurse said you should try to move."

"Will you tell me what I want to know?"

"Deal," he said, leveling a grin on her that made his eyes crinkle, the blue lighting up again. "So come on, Kate. We'll shuffle down the hall and back before breakfast."

* * *

Every breath was agony, every step a knife's edge down her spine.

And Castle kept clutching her. _Clutching_ her. "Castle, would you just stop grabbing me every time-"

"You're going to fall-"

"If I fall, catch me. Until then, stop bruising my arm with your panic attacks," she growled. She couldn't yank her arm out of his grip without tugging at the very core of pain that rippled across her back and through to her sternum. The slow, creeping walk down the hall had her half bent but not broken; she was not broken.

He carefully let go and she felt the weightlessness of her arm now, the ease in her side from where she'd been tugging against every grip of his fingers.

"Kate-"

"I'm okay. I won't. . ."

The dizziness hit her in a rush. She blinked slowly and stopped, her vision tunneling, sounds receding, her knees turning to water.

"Kate?"

"I'm okay," she insisted, swallowing hard. "I'm okay, just. . .give me a second."

He hovered, but he didn't touch. She closed her eyes and fought to keep from slumping to the floor, not at all happy with the rebellion of her body.

"Kate, I-"

"Shut up. Just. . .give me a moment."

He quieted, but he was breathing right at her neck, his hands somewhere close to her waist, his body heat breaking over her in a wave of anxiety and attentiveness that made her want to scream.

"Maybe I should-"

"No."

And then he finally shut up and she could concentrate on herself for a moment, on the sway of her body towards the ground, concentrate on fighting the pull and lure of gravity. She closed mental fingers around that core of steel that had dragged her through terrible grief and the police academy and her father's drinking, through her training officer's betrayal only earlier this year, through all of that and then-

She opened her eyes.

Castle's deep blues were drowning, but she was not.

He looked guilty, and ashamed, and she was surprised at how much she could see of that when he usually-

and then it was gone.

The hard shell of his discipline and training came down over his face and it was gone.

Kate slowly put her hand out to his forearm, brushed her thumb over the soft hair there. "Thank you. For not. . ."

He didn't look happy, but he nodded.

"Castle, I'm going to be. . .so bad at this," she said honestly, that swift look into his sadness had practically burned into her. "You're going to hate me when this is all done."

At that, his smile came back - a grimacing and chagrined thing, but there nonetheless. He shook his head and leaned in, feathered his lips at her forehead.

"No. Never, Kate. Never."

* * *

They met her father coming off the elevator and she bit furiously at the inside of her cheek to keep him from seeing it.

"Dad."

"Whoa, look at you. Up and about. Katie, sweetheart, you look like you've been shot."

She grunted on a laugh, squinted one eye at him. "You're incorrigible."

"One of your team sat with me last night, instructed me in gallows humor. Did it work?"

"You and Castle have the worst puns."

"Hey, why are you dragging me into this?" Castle said, a tinge of indignation in his voice that was completely faked.

"Rick, son. I brought you a shirt from home. Getting tired of seeing that one." Her father held up a plastic bag, finger pointing at Castle.

"From home," he murmured at her side. "Thank you, Jim."

Castle took the bag but seemed entirely unwilling to go anywhere else than right there at Kate's side. She frowned and nudged him with her elbow.

"Go change, Castle."

"I'm fine. I'll change when we get back to your room."

She grit her teeth and glanced away, but she knew her father saw it. He was smirking at her: _Look at that, a man who won't say _yes, dear_ to your every demand. _Kate relaxed her fists - the grip of her fingers actually made her back tight and pushed pain into her chest - and she tried to turn to Castle with a half-smile on her face.

She wasn't sure she succeeded.

"Rick. If I have to walk back with you for the length of the whole hallway, we are both going to regret it. So you go change."

Castle huffed at that, part indignation, part amusement - hurt too, she saw - but he stood back from Kate, let her father take her elbow instead. "That could be true. Me more than you, I think."

She sighed, the ripple of pain in her chest maybe not entirely from the rigid stress of her body. "Castle."

"I'll go change - we just passed the men's room."

"Rick," she said softly, and it stopped him, made him turn his eyes to her. Hadn't she just warned him she would be bad at this? Did he think she was exaggerating? "Rick, come here a moment."

He frowned but stepped back to her side, the shirt in its plastic bag clutched to his torso like he needed something to hold on to.

"Kiss me," she said softly. "I need you to kiss me."

In a rush, his eyes melted into tenderness and adoration, all so clear and available for her to see, and he leaned in to brush his lips so lightly over hers, his hand caressing her jaw.

"You can do better than that," she murmured against his cheek, eyes closed at the warmth of him.

"Not in front of your dad."

She chuckled and felt his answering smile, and then he was moving away from her again. Reluctantly, yes, but he looked more at ease as he did. The bathroom door swallowed him up and Kate rested her hand on top of her father's arm, started that slug-like movement down the hall to her room.

"Rick. . .?" her father started quietly.

She turned her head and watched him struggle with whatever he needed to say.

"Dad?"

"He found the guy."

"I know. He told me."

"The CIA won't let him. . .do it alone, will they, honey?"

She licked at her chapped bottom lip, leaned against his shoulder. "I don't know. They might. But Dad - I don't think Castle would do it like that."

"You don't."

She thought about that a moment and then sighed. "No, I - no. He's not like me."

Her father gave a dry chuckle, patted her hand. "Not many like you, sweetheart."

"Sorry, Dad. I never meant-"

"Of course not. Hazard of the job." Her father had it memorized, but she thought maybe he really meant it or had learned to mean it.

Or didn't want her to worry about him.

"Come on, Katie. Let's get you back to your room. You're starting to get heavy."

* * *

In the bathroom, Castle carefully folded the dress shirt with its stained cuffs, realized that her blood had soaked through and painted his abs, his chest. He stared at himself in the mirror, swallowed hard, and then reached forward to turn on the warm water.

He snagged a paper towel and began cleaning himself off, felt his hands trembling again. He squeezed a fist and leaned against the sink, bowing his head, taking deep breaths.

He lifted his head, stared himself down in the mirror.

He was fine. She was fine.

She was fine.


	5. Chapter 5

**Close Encounters**

* * *

"Looking sharp, Castle."

He gave her a tight smile as he entered the room in his clean shirt, and he found her sitting in the chair at the side of the hospital bed. Castle shot a glance to her father who was leaning against the sink, but Jim only shrugged as if to say, _What can you do?_

"Kate, get back in bed."

"No."

He growled and came for her, but he hesitated when he realized there was no good place to grab, no way to force her without hurting her more. She smirked up at him, her body held rigidly away from the back of the chair, and he hovered over her a second more before giving up.

"Kate-"

"No, Castle." Instead of petulance, he saw a rising tide of panicky _need_ and he backed off, breathing as hard as if she'd punched him in the gut.

She needed to be better; she wanted it so badly that she was going to force it on herself.

There were no other chairs in the room, and he was afraid of that look on her face. So he sank to the floor at her feet, put his back to her legs, his arms hooked around his knees as he tried to chill out. Relax. Play his part in her game of pretend. _I'm fine, Castle._ Sure she was.

Sure she was.

Jim was looking at him in amusement, and then he shifted his gaze to his daughter. "Well, have you had anything for breakfast?"

"Not yet. They delivered the food tray, but it looks revolting," Kate said, and suddenly Castle felt her hands in his hair, nails scratching at his scalp, the back of his neck. He held his breath, tried not to let his eyes slip shut.

Jim straightened up. "Why don't I go out and get us all something? There's a few fast food place down the street."

"Yeah," Kate said, and Castle could practically hear the indulgent smile in her voice. "Actually, I would love a cinnamon roll."

"And eggs," he said. "Protein."

Her fingers squeezed his neck and Jim smirked. "I'll bring an assortment. Be right back, Katie." The older man came in at Kate's side and leaned over the chair to kiss her cheek; Kate moved a hand to squeeze her father's, and then Jim was walking back out of her hospital room.

Castle stayed where he was on the floor, felt her fingers come back to his nape, scrape up through his hair and along his scalp. His eyes slammed shut and his head dipped; her fingers continued to stroke, both hands now, and he felt it drain slowly away.

He let himself take a moment, let her fingers work magic, the silence between them both heavy and comfortable, like the weight of a blanket dragging him down to sleep.

She stroked her thumbs around the edge of his ears, and he felt her body bow over his head, her mouth at his temple, her breath skimming the side of his face. He raised one hand and tangled his fingers in her knotted hair, his palm to her cheek, and breathed.

Breathed.

Her lips brushed the inside of his wrist. "Cole Maddox," she said softly.

Yes. He should be working.

"After breakfast," he whispered back. "I'll go after breakfast."

"Castle."

"I know," he murmured but still couldn't bring himself to turn around, face her.

She'd taken a bullet for him.

"I don't think you do," she said quietly, and her fingers scraped slowly through his hair. But she didn't elaborate, and he didn't have anything left to try to understand.

She needed answers; he was being selfish sticking around.

"I'll go," he said and screwed up the courage to stand.

She clutched at him, fingers tightening, and then she let go, released him, trailing back through his hair one last time. He stood and somehow - the clean shirt, the feel of her at his back as always - a little strength had returned, renewed purpose.

"Kiss me before you go, Castle."

He turned back to her, surprised, and she was shaking her head at him.

"I shouldn't have to keep reminding you, Rick."

Castle came back to her, leaned over with his fingers catching her hair, and pressed his mouth hard into hers, taking.

Her tongue shoved past his lips and inside, stroked ruthlessly at him until he had to catch his balance on the wooden arms of the chair. When he broke from her, she was grinning and breathless and swaying.

"You're going back to bed," he said gruffly, cleared his throat to try again. "Right now, Kate. Come on."

And this time, she let herself be led.

* * *

He'd just gotten a clean shirt and now here he was in the Warehouse, unfolding the blood-soaked funeral shirt and sliding his arms back into the sleeves, feeling the stiff, bloodied edges that he didn't even try to tuck into his pants.

He swallowed hard and felt the weight of it fall over him again. He'd gained a momentary reprieve when she'd scraped her fingers through his hair, and now here he was again.

For the first time in years, he didn't want to do his job. He wanted someone else to do it, to be the one.

But he was the only one who could.

As he buttoned up the blood-crusted shirt, he let it all layer over him again: the look of startled horror on her face as she'd crumpled in his arms, the way her mouth had worked but nothing had come out, the clutch of her fingers in his shirt as he'd cradled her against him, and finally-

the life leaving her eyes.

Slow fade out.

And before he could truly process what he was doing, Castle was slamming out of the locker room and stalking down the hall to Interrogation.

The door bounced against the back wall and he came inside, eyes on Maddox, only on Maddox, and slammed it shut again.

Maddox sat up straighter, looked ragged but unbroken. He sneered at Castle and his lip curled; he'd already made the assumption.

"You," Castle leveled, planting his fists on the table as he leaned in. "You did this."

Maddox sneered. "_Man up_. Casualty of wartime, _Agent_."

"Casualty?" It ripped out of his throat with the force of a real grief he hadn't known was there. It swamped him and made it impossible to speak.

"We're professionals," Maddox said, a sardonic glint in his eye as he leaned back. "Or I am. Not so sure about you anymore."

"You did this," he repeated.

Maddox rolled his eyes, clenched a fist. "I was aiming for you," he spat out. "Not my fault she threw herself in front of you."

Castle went still, a terrible grief opening up in him, splitting wide. His words felt strangled in his throat. "You did this. Not me. You."

"No. You did. You wouldn't let this go," Maddox said softly, that glint of the hunter in his eyes again.

Somewhere in him, Castle knew this was exactly what he'd wanted coming in here, exactly the plan, but it ached like a wounded thing in his chest.

"You just wouldn't stop, no matter how many times we warned you. You just kept coming. And so my employer was forced to resort to extreme measures."

Castle lifted his head to Maddox with clear, placid eyes.

"She's not dead. She's alive."

Maddox flinched.

Castle smiled.

"She's alive, and you failed. Wonder how your employer will react to that?"

* * *

The surgeon had come by to check on Beckett, flirting and sweet, giving her a wink as he left, that devastatingly handsome face. She felt stupidly better for it; his visit had relieved some of the terrible ache that had settled when Castle had left her.

Her father was back at the apartment gathering the things she'd asked for, and she'd felt broken and alone and hating herself for both of those. Once the surgeon was gone, the nurse came in to check her IV and blood pressure, record it in her chart, and after that was the attending physician.

She'd just laid on her side and closed her eyes, so weary, when another woman came in - this one a case worker assigned to her discharge plan. She introduced herself and glanced through the chart, but she kept her eyes on Kate the whole time, friendly and courteous.

"I can get out of here?" Kate breathed, relief cascading through her chest.

"Not today," the woman smiled. "But soon, if we get everything in place. You'll need physical therapy and someone at home to help with major things. Some medicines. We'll go over your care plan together as we get closer to that time."

"But soon. That time is soon?"

"A few days. Just to keep an eye on you, post-op. We don't want any clotting, but we also don't want any internal bleeding that won't stop. That's why it's important that you give us accurate accounts of pain and exhaustion."

Kate wrinkled her forehead into a frown, but the woman was shaking her head.

"Gets you home faster, Ms. Beckett. Now the nurse tells me your husband has been in here, so I'll go over the care plan with him as well, make sure he knows what to do. When do you expect him back?"

Her husband. Kate opened her mouth but couldn't find words, couldn't make sense of it.

"Ma'am? Are you okay? Should I call-"

"I'm okay," she got out, sucking in a breath that ached. "Not my - he's my. We're not married yet."

Yet? Shit, shit, what-

"Oh, I'm sorry. I got some bad information. But he does live with you?"

Does he-

"Yes," she croaked. Basically. "He's gone a lot for work though."

The woman frowned. "Well. We'll talk about that with him, okay? You're going to need some full-time care for a few weeks. But we have time to figure out a care plan. Plenty of time."

"Plenty?" she sighed.

The woman laughed, patted her hand. "Sorry, but yes. Will your fiance be back today?"

"Oh, well. I - yes." She didn't know for sure, did she? But, then again, she did. She knew. "Yes. Probably at lunch."

"We're coming up on that now," the woman said, glancing at her watch.

"We are?" Kate darted her eyes to the clock on the wall over the whiteboard that listed her caregivers and the drugs she was being given. It was nearly 12:30. "Oh. Well."

"I'll come back in an hour, and if he gets here before then, call my pager." She handed over a card, placing it on the side table, and then left Kate to herself.

_Was_ he coming for lunch?

* * *

She woke when her father kissed her cheek and whispered good-bye. "Dad?" she murmured. "When. . ."

"Just been watching you sleep, sweetheart. Like I used to when you were little."

"What?" she mumbled, couldn't make her eyes open.

"Sleep. It's healing, Katie. Just sleep."

And she did.

* * *

She roused at the knock on the door, eyes flickered open to see the woman from before.

"Sorry to wake you," she said cheerfully, but quietly enough that Kate could drift for a moment, ride out the ebbing tide of painkillers. "I guess your fiance hasn't made it yet."

Her eyes startled open. "Oh. I'm. . .I don't know. I've been in and out, I don't-"

Had Castle come back? She had no idea; the day had blurred together.

"I thought. . .after lunch," Kate started, turning her head slowly to the clock. Five-thirty?

"I did," the woman said softly. "I came by after lunch. You talked with me. But that's okay; I don't expect you to remember."

Kate realized her shoulder ached fiercely, but the pain around her wound was down to nothing. She shifted in the bed and flinched as it surged to life, shook out its scales, and breathed fire down her spine.

"Kate?"

She opened her eyes and saw Castle in the doorway, day-weary and unsmiling, but the ice in his eyes beginning to melt.

"Rick," she murmured, swallowed to clear her throat.

The woman turned and held out her hand. "I'm Sheri, the social worker assigned to Kate. I'm here to talk about the discharge plan."

"She has to go home?" Castle croaked.

Kate frowned. She didn't like that word choice. "When I _get_ to go home-"

"She'll need some help. It's Rick?"

"Rick Castle," he said automatically, his hand coming up. And then she saw the flash of grim resignation on his face and she realized they'd never talked about this-

Was he allowed to give out his name? Was _she_ allowed to give out his name?

"Rick, nice to meet you. You guys ready for a quick rundown on what Kate's daily needs are going to look like?"

His eyes met hers and she nodded, unfurled her fingers to him. Castle came in an instant to her side with his fingers in her hair, and she closed her eyes to his touch.

"Maybe we should wait? Kate, you look tired."

"No, don't. Let's do this now."

* * *

The recovery process seemed daunting. Castle watched her face as she drifted in and out of the conversation, realized he'd be the one to keep her schedule, make her take the pills, get her to therapy, help her shower. . .

That could be fun.

He grinned and laid his hand on her shoulder but she'd fallen asleep again. The social worker paused and Castle gestured for her to go on.

"I'll fill her in. What else?"

"The surgeon might have already told you guys this, but we'll give you a packet on wound care. What the stitches will do, what the scar should look like, things to look for as far as infection goes."

"Infection," he swallowed, glanced back to Kate. "It sounds like she needs. . .I'll take off work for a while. How long do you think I'll need to ask for?"

Sheri gave him a wide smile, evidently pleased with his reaction. "Well, how long can you? At least a month, but if that's not feasible-"

"I can - I'll make it work," he said, trying to picture how that might go over with Kate. "She'll need someone with her at night. And just every day stuff too-"

"Yes. She - I was led to believe you would be there."

"She told you-? Yes. Of course. I'm - she couldn't kick me out if she tried." He turned his eyes back to Kate, her chin nearly to her chest as she slept, arms drawn in against the chill she couldn't seem to shake. So she had told everyone he was living with her, had she?

He supposed he was, really. When was he ever at his own apartment? He'd get back to the Office, have his usual hours-long debrief, and then he'd come straight to her place whether she was there or not. How many times had his presence startled her as she'd come back from work to find him doing laundry, or making dinner, or working out to her stupid yoga dvds that were actually _hard_?

He stroked his fingers through her hair, but they caught in the tangled mess of it. Her skin was paper thin, the blue of her blood vessels so prominent.

"I'll get out of here," the social worker said. "I'll leave you with a few things to read over together, and then as her discharge date approaches, I'll be back to make sure you understand everything. Rick - I have to say, it was nice to finally meet Kate's fiance."

He startled from her side, lifting up from the bed where he'd been leaning, took the hand Sheri offered.

Fiance?

Kate. Wow.

He shook hands and Sheri left, shutting the door behind her.

Castle turned slowly in his spot to stare at the woman curled up in the hospital bed, dwarfed by the sea of beige and cream, the IV draped across her hip, the open hospital gown displaying the vivid white of the bandage at her upper back.

He came closer, tugged the blankets up a little more, laid his warm palm to the exposed skin at her spine, tracing the edges of the surgical tape.

Her eyes fluttered open, senseless but catching hold of his, her mouth working but soundless.

"Kate," he murmured, more hello than question. Fiance, huh?

Her eyes closed, but her body twitched and her lashes parted again, that luminous as night iris, and he felt her fingers uncurl and grasp his wrist before sliding off, her strength gone.

He leaned in and brushed his lips to hers, felt her breath exhale long and slow and sleepy.

"Love you too, Beckett."

* * *

It had started already, hadn't it?

She swayed in the bathroom and looked at her ragged self in the mirror, felt her helplessness and frustration rising in her like a flood.

Getting to the bathroom - with Castle's help - hadn't been so bad, but _going _to the bathroom had nearly killed her. She wasn't about to ask Castle's help with that, never, and once she'd stood in front of the mirror to wash her hands, she'd felt a modicum of triumph.

Until she looked at herself.

She looked like shit. And it didn't help that Castle kept running his fingers through her hair, over and over, the oil from his skin adding to the grime, the caked in feel of it, matted and dirty.

She needed to wash her hair, and she absolutely, without a doubt, couldn't do it alone.

"Castle," she called out, felt the twinge in her back as she used her lungs to raise her voice.

But he was inside in a second, barreling through the shut door with a look on his face that made her laugh, actually laugh, and he glared at her mirth.

"Sorry, sorry," she giggled, wincing when the sound came out of her mouth. "Shit, I'm doped up."

"Yes, you certainly are."

"Can you - I need to wash my hair," she groaned, bit her bottom lip.

"Not gonna lie, Beckett. Seen better days. But it does give this faint impression of really magnificent sex."

"What?" she laughed, gasping at him in the mirror as he came up behind her. He lifted his thigh between hers and suddenly she was half-sitting on him, her back easing, her shoulders dropping in relief, and she hadn't even known how bad it was.

His fingers came to the rubberband in her hair and tugged on it, but it snarled and wouldn't let go. He laughed and worked at it, his other hand at her neck to stabilize her head. She couldn't even hold her head steady.

"I mean. . .look at it," he said finally, her hair falling limply around her shoulders. "Okay, not quite. But when it was up and mussed and all crazy around your head-"

"Thanks, Castle. Really makes me feel better."

He was grinning at her in the mirror and some of that tight and painful grief seemed to disappear from his eyes. "It's bedhead, Beckett. A kind of sexy, tousled, too much time under me-"

"Oh my G-"

"You know it is."

"You need to shut up."

His eyes were still laughing; the blue looked good on him, even in the terrible light of the bathroom. "No worse than that morning we tried syrup and spilled it-"

"That was fun," she grinned, a surge of power at the memory. "Took a long time to get it out."

"In the shower," he murmured, eyebrow raising. "That was the best part."

She wanted to be stern, wanted to narrow her eyes and be _herself_ but he was sexy, and intense, and he was looking at her like he wanted to devour her. And she looked and felt like crap. Still it helped.

"Well, Castle. Can't shower. But-"

His gasp made her smirk; she shook her head slowly.

"No, super spy. I need help washing my hair. No fun stuff."

"Who said washing your hair wouldn't be fun?"

* * *

"We need a waterboard," he muttered.

Kate shot him a startled look.

He grinned. She looked disheveled and exhausted, but she was still demanding with that raised eyebrow. "I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of water torture within the United States clandestine protective services-"

"You want to _waterboard_ me?"

"Well, no, duh. Obviously not, Beckett. But it has this great feature we could use to tilt you back so that the water runs down into a drain - so your bandage wouldn't get wet-"

"I don't want to know how you know that."

"Too late. I think I might have already let it slip how I know that." He grimaced at her but wriggled his eyebrows and she giggled again, rolling her eyes as the sound came out of her mouth. He grinned, pleased to hear it, because it was just so obvious she hated that she couldn't control it. And he was making her laugh; he was helping.

"Waterboarding aside, Castle, you're the super spy. Figure it out."

"I will, I am. I swear." But he had no idea. She couldn't lean back to get at the sink or the tub - she could barely lean forward, so that was out. Then-

On her side. Huh. Somehow. How could he do that?

Beckett swayed again and he reached out for her, thoughtless and stupid. She hissed as his hands grabbed her arms a little too ungently.

"Shit, your back-"

"I'm okay, it's okay." She winced and slowly leaned towards him. "Do that - thing with your leg."

"What?" He sent her a startled look, his fingers skimming the outside of her arms because he wanted to just grab her up and carry her wherever she wanted to go, but not only would she never let him, but he actually couldn't, not with the wound in her back.

"Your leg," she muttered, taking a slow step towards him in the harsh light of the bathroom. Her knee came between his thighs and his leg lifted instinctively; she grunted and her body leaned into him, her forehead at his neck.

He clutched at her hips to steady her, felt the way she melted into him, her hands in fists in his shirt. "You okay?"

"Better. Much." She turned and laid her cheek against his shoulder and he eased back against the wall so that he was tilted slightly, giving her a place to rest and himself an easier time of supporting her on his thigh.

She'd spent too long standing. He stroked his fingers at the nape of her neck, tried to think of a way to rinse her hair without breaking her back or having the water run down to the gunshot wound.

"You do this all the time," she murmured suddenly.

"I know," he said, stilling his fingers. "You hate it, I know. When it's clean, I'll stop."

She huffed against him, shaking her head slightly. "No, the thing with your leg."

"What?"

"Whenever we stand close," she whispered and suddenly she was burying her face against him and he could feel the heat of her cheeks. "It's erotic."

"What, I do what?" _Erotic?_

Her hand drifted down to his other thigh, the back of her fingers light and awkward. "This. Your leg between mine. It used to - I thought it was domineering of you."

"I've heard I'm a bully."

She huffed and her fingers scratched, making him squeeze her neck in response. That was probably domineering too, wasn't it?

"But I like it," she rasped. "I like that you don't even know you're doing it half the time. When I'm washing my hands at the sink or fixing my coffee, putting on make-up in the morning - you come up behind me and kiss my shoulder, my neck-"

His hand clutched at her hip, body burning at her words, and he had to bury his mouth into the top of her head and close his eyes.

"-and you do - this - every time."

He shifted his thigh and she sighed, one of comfort rather than arousal, and despite how inflaming her words were, he wanted only to hold her close like this, have her lean against him forever.

"I like it," she murmured. "And now. . .it's also makes you a handy crutch."

He hummed with amusement, drifted his lips down to her temple, the first length of skin he could reach.

"Figure out how to wash my hair yet?"

"Despite your attempt to thoroughly distract me, Beckett, yes. I have."


	6. Chapter 6

**Close Encounters 3**

* * *

The ubiquitous chair was pulled up to the sink in her hospital room, the extra blanket from the bed stuffed into a wedge and placed in the seat, then the pillow at her shoulder. They'd had to borrow a couple of manuals from the nurses' station so she could sit up high enough, but it seemed to be working. Kate leaned her cheek on the washcloth covering the cold edge of the sink, felt Castle's thick, agile fingers working through her hair.

He used the cup and poured water at her hairline; she closed her eyes with a sigh and felt him catch a trickle that went down her neck. The water was hot and it chased away the chill in her skin, made her relax for the first time all night.

He was going to take his sweet time about it, wasn't he? She could already tell. That was fine; his fingers felt good and she was so tired she might fall asleep before her shoulder went numb from the angle.

"Beckett. You awake?"

"Mm, barely."

"Meant to ask you."

Her eyes flashed open. Maddox? Would he tell her now what-

"Fiance?"

Fi-

"Oh." She felt her lips twitch and wondered what his face had looked like when Sheri had called him that. She assumed it was Sheri, but it could've been one of the nurses. Though they tended to just call him _your man_ and leave it at that. Lot of talk among the nurses about him already, and they'd come in all day asking about him.

"Just, _Oh_?" he said finally. "Wanna say something more to that?"

"You asked me. No, actually, you didn't ask. Huh."

He laughed and his hand worked up under her ear, cradling her head as he rinsed her hair again. "I didn't ask, I just told. Commanded. I'm a bully, right?"

"You're never going to let me live that down, are you?"

"That's twice you've called me a bully, Beckett. Has to have some kind of truth to it."

"Some," she sighed. "But you're my bully."

She heard him laugh again, felt the flex of his fingers in her hair as he tried untangling the knotted and ragged clump of it.

"Also."

"Mm."

"Everyone seems to think we live together."

She flinched and her eyes opened, but he was still cradling her head, fingers so twisted in her hair she couldn't move away even if she wanted to.

"Are we not?" she asked, hated the streak of insecurity in her voice.

"Kate."

"No, right. We never said anything like that, and I'm - I was jumping to conclusions."

"We are if you're - you don't mind?"

"Mind?" she grunted, closing her eyes again as her cheeks flushed. She had a feeling this recovery process was going to embarrass the hell out of her. "Castle, you didn't give me much choice. You just showed up, like a stray dog."

"Huh, that's - attractive. Great. You pitied me and-"

"No." She loosened her fingers from the front of her hospital gown and reached for his elbow as it came near, squeezed with what strength she had. "No, not pity."

"Are we living together, Kate, because I-"

"Yes," she said, had to bite down on the surge of questions that came with it, like why hadn't he thought the same and where were they going with this and what did he think was going on when he lived at her apartment every day he was home?

"Good," he growled, opening the faucet so that the rest of what he might have said was drowned in the white noise of running water. He poured another cupful over her head and the sting of its heat felt good, felt clean despite the fact that he hadn't even started washing her hair yet.

When the water turned off, she kicked the last of her pride to the curb. "Castle, did you not think we were?"

"I knew I was," he said quietly, and his fingers broke through the worst of the tangles and free, a kind of release opening in her chest as well. "I knew I was, Kate, but I guess I was worried that if I told you I was, you'd. . .never let me in again."

Her hand managed to stay on his elbow, like he was restricting his movements so that she could specifically hang on to him. "That might be true of me," she sighed finally. "But Castle, you - you were stabbed. Over my mother's damn case and I - I didn't want you anywhere but with me."

His wet fingers came to her cheek, then the moist heat of his mouth followed, a kiss that gentled the uneasy ache in her chest.

"Kate, love-"

She opened her eyes at the crack in his voice, saw tears clouding his eyes but not falling. She'd never seen him cry, never seen him this close to it either.

"You were shot," he whispered.

She didn't understand. "Yes." She'd been shot but what did that have to do with living together? "Oh, well, you'll _have _to live with me now, won't you? If you don't want to-"

"Of course I want to. And not because I have to. Because I have _been_, Kate."

She couldn't help the smile that drifted across her face, felt his fingers range along her scalp as he worked the last of the small tangles out of her hair.

"Have been," she murmured, pressed her lips together until she bit the bottom one. He teased the edge of her eyebrow with his thumb, the wet skin cooling the flush in her cheeks.

"Have been, Detective." And then he was wringing out her hair and snapping the top off the shampoo. "And will be. But maybe you're just keeping me around for my hair washing skills."

"That's true." She felt his hand cupping her ear, and then the slick, cool gel was being lathered into her hair. She hummed involuntarily; her emotions were at the surface, popping out of her like bubbles escaping, and every shift of her body gave her the overwhelming urge to cry.

He didn't seem to feel the need to keep talking, so she let her mind drift as his hands worked through her hair. Even though the shampoo had already done its job, Castle still massaged her scalp, dragged his fingers through the wet glide of her hair, the shampoo sudsing up and blooming with the rich scent of musk and lilies.

"Where'd you find the shampoo?" she murmured.

"The night nurse gave it to me."

She smiled softly. "Your new best friend."

"Mm." Every comb of his fingers made the fragrance eddy around her head, fresh and clean, so that after a long few minutes, she realized she was falling asleep. "Rick."

"Almost done, Kate."

Her cheek felt bruised, her shoulder aching now as well, but the soft tug of his hands in her hair, the warmth of the water, and the smell of the shampoo made her want to never move again.

Warm water crept through her scalp and down her hair, washing away the last of her consciousness, flooding her with the slow tide of sleep.

* * *

Castle wrapped her hair around his fist and squeezed the water out, dried his fingers on a paper towel. She was starting to slip down in the chair, so he slid an arm around her neck, the other behind her knees, and lifted her carefully. It couldn't be good for her stitches, but he carried her to the bed and settled her on her side, the bed already lowered.

She curled up instinctively, her arms drawing into her chest. Castle stroked his finger down her nose and she shivered but didn't wake. He had to tug the covers out from under her, resisted the urge to crawl in bed with her.

The thin blanket came up to her lower back, but he didn't want to take it any higher, not while she slept on her stomach with the bandage exposed. He went back for the thicker blanket that they'd stuffed into the chair, unfolded it over her as well. Her hair was still wet, but hopefully the added blanket would be enough.

He should get back to the Warehouse, check up on Ryan. He knew Esposito was out there somewhere too, no doubt taking matters into his own hands, investigating without permission and getting his ass handed to him.

She'd sleep through most of the night, but he ached at the idea of leaving her. He needed to; he needed to do his job, keep her safe, find the man behind this once and for all. He checked his phone again and read his messages, saw his father had landed.

Shit.

He rubbed his forehead and glanced back to Kate, asleep in the bed, and finally stalked towards the door.

* * *

"What have you done now, Richard?"

Castle made a fist and breathed, leaned his forehead against the wall outside Kate's room. The phone pressed tighter into his ear and he had that sense of deja vu that they'd had this conversation before. Over and over. "Kate was shot. In my place. I-"

"So I've heard."

He closed his eyes. "Da-" Castle cut himself off from the entreaty, growled to keep it down; he hadn't called the man father since he was six years old. "Agent Black, I have the investigation in hand. Cole Maddox is in custody and under interrogation-"

"About that."

He froze, breath rattling in his chest. "About. . .Maddox, sir?"

"This isn't a CIA matter."

"The hell it's not."

"You're to turn him over to the NYPD."

The NYPD? "Where he can be liberated from their custody - or even killed - just like what happened to Lockwood only _days_ ago?"

"This isn't a discussion."

"No," he said. "No. I won't."

"Release Maddox to the NYPD. He shot a cop; he's prosecuted by the state of New York. Not the CIA."

"I am _this close_ to finding out who is behind all this. You were the one who said we were taking over jurisdiction on her mother's case. You were the one who said we needed to dig into the NSA, find the traitors. That was you, sir, that was you."

"The girl has been shot, Richard. This is a police matter."

Castle felt his nails puncture the skin of his palm. "He was aiming for me," he hissed.

"You forget yourself. I thought after a month of being back with us, you'd reclaim your natural sense of discipline. That girl is-"

"Detective. Kate Beckett. And she put herself in front of a bullet for me," he said coldly, letting the damn discipline rule his voice. "Maddox was hired to kill me. I'm not letting him walk out of my custody just so the NYPD can fucking lose him."

"Are you saying you're disobeying a direct order, Richard?"

"I'm _saying_ buy me some damn time. You used to have my back-"

"What do you think I'm doing, Agent Castle? I am protecting what's mine."

His blood ran cold. "Who got to you?" he whispered. Agent _Castle?_ "Someone got to you. On Air Force One? Who was it?"

There was a long and tenuous silence. Castle rolled to put his back against the wall, scanned the hospital corridor with a pounding heart.

"Richard."

Not good. This was not good.

"What we have is a failure to communicate."

Shit. The compromise code.

"Yes, sir, I do believe you're right."

Castle ended the call with a jab of his thumb, ripped the back off his phone and yanked the battery out. He pulled the sim card, pushed it into his pocket, and walked the rest of it down to a trash can just past Kate's room.

He came back to her door, paced in front of it for a moment, and then spun around and slammed his fist into the wall.

The plaster cracked, his scarred knuckles opened up, but he barely felt it.

He had to get to Maddox before he was released to the NYPD. Once the shooter was gone, he didn't expect to ever see Maddox again.

* * *

Amesha seemed not a bit bothered by his hasty demand to use her phone. She handed it over and he dialed Ryan's number from heart, walking away from the night nurse and back towards Kate's door.

It rang through once, but he called again instead of leaving a message and Ryan picked up.

"This is Detective Ryan. If you're-"

"Ryan, it's Castle. Beckett needs your help."

"Castle, what the hell. I called you five times. Your investigation got shut down; your jackass of a father kicked me out-"

"I know. I know, I just heard."

"Eastman gave me a getaway kit."

"What?" he said, straightening up in the hallway. "Eastman-"

"I have two laptops, a burner phone, a fat wad of cash. He said it was for you."

"How many IDs?"

"One."

Shit. "Not happening. Beckett's not safe; I'm not safe. My father just warned me-"

"Your father is the one who kicked me out and ordered the interrogation shut down. Only two hours ago. I called you, man-"

"I had my phone off." Giving Beckett a damn-

Castle swallowed hard and pressed his thumb into his eye socket, took a breath. "Call Esposito, go by Beckett's place and get her dad for me, okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, man, I get it. We protect our own. You got Beckett?"

"I've got her. Give the getaway kit to her father. Have him hole up, don't tell me where."

"You call-"

"I'm not sure I can do that," he said with a rough edge to his voice that wouldn't let him get very far. "I should leave Beckett with you, I should-" He shook his head and closed his eyes, tilted his head back. He should leave Beckett with Espo and Ryan, go after this guy on his own. He needed to get back into the Warehouse and question Maddox. He was the one who knew-

"Look, hold on. Before you go making plans. Listen to what happened to Esposito."

"He's there with you?"

"Yeah, man, we're both at the 12th. I got kicked out-"

"What happened to Esposito?" Castle held his breath, kept his back to Kate's door, his eyes on the hallway, hyper vigilant. A month back in the field had sharpened his dulled responses, honed his instincts, but over awareness could lead to mistakes as well.

"Yo, Castle, this is Esposito."

"What happened, tell me-"

"I got approached by a ghost."

"What does that mean? Another CIA-"

"Not a spook, an old buddy of Montgomery's. He called me while I was in Montgomery's home office, looking for evidence."

"He called your cell phone?" Castle asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Yeah, exactly. He said Montgomery sent him a file, a file with all the information on this guy that we could ever need - but it's not evidence. It's blackmail to make a deal. For Beckett's life, for the Montgomerys."

"A file," he said dully. "From some. . .voice on a phone."

"Listen to me, bro. He said-"

"A voice on the phone. And what do we do in return, huh? What's this deal look like, Espo?"

"Don't call me that. She calls me that, not you, you selfish son of a bi-"

"Back off!" he heard Ryan yell, the scuffle on the other end. Ryan must've put him on speaker and now Castle could hear the two of them fighting like children.

"Guys. Focus. Come on. The deal, _Esposito._"

"We stop investigating. She stays alive."

He tilted his head back against the door, sucked in a long, terrible breath that caught in his lungs and wouldn't release.

Her life for her mother's murderer's protection.

She'd never forgive him.

"Ryan, you still there?"

"Here."

"I need you to do something for me."

* * *

She woke on the sharp swell of pain, thrashed to get away from it.

"Kate, shhh, it's okay. It's okay, love. It's me."

She battled back darkness and disorientation, pressed her hands into her eyes, fought the feeling of swimming against a current. "I'm gonna throw up."

"Beckett, I need you to wake up."

"I'm gonna-" She gasped and stiffened as her back hit the bed, her legs scissoring under a heavy weight, unable to move.

"Beckett, look at me."

The dark edges were ripped away and she blinked, felt her wrists gripped like steel, cuffed? and beyond that his face.

"Castle."

His hands eased around her wrists and she shivered, memory shifting in her head and swirling up before her eyes. She closed them, felt the world tilt precariously-

"Eyes open, come on. Eyes open, Beckett."

She did, just to glare at him, her stomach like a choppy sea, but he wasn't smiling at her, wasn't much more than scared.

"Castle. What's going on?"

Her hair was wet - oh, he'd washed it and she'd fallen asleep and-

"We're in trouble," he said quietly.

She licked her lips and battled back the undertow of the drugs. "Trouble. Trouble, why?"

"Kate. My father just warned me - the case has gone out of his hands. They're giving Maddox back to the NYPD tomorrow."

She curled her arms into her chest and tried to untangle the knotted string of her concentration. "I don't understand."

"Kate, the people behind this have gone over my father's head to get your shooter released from CIA custody. Which means-"

"He'll escape. Or kill someone inside the prison," she said hollowly, reached out automatically to curl her fingers in the collar of his shirt as he came close. Castle wrapped a hand around hers and unhooked her.

"Kate, I have to go."

"No," she frowned, blinking hard at him in the darkness. "Wait. Why?"

His hand came to the back of her neck, a soft squeeze as he tried to ease her back to the bed. "Kate. I have to interrogate him before he's taken out of my custody."

"Okay, okay," she muttered, closed her eyes again.

"I wanted you to know where I went, if you woke before I got back."

She nodded roughly, her head against the pillow, and his fingers came to tangle in her wet hair.

"Esposito and a couple officers are right outside. Keep you safe."

"What about you?" she said, fighting hard to open her eyes and see him. "Castle, aiming for you. What-"

"Ryan's with me. Eastman will be there too."

"Ryan, Eastman, good. Mm, think that's okay. You be safe." Her head was swimming and her eyes burned. "Sorry, I'm gonna fall asleep, Castle."

"That's fine. Go back to sleep, Kate," he murmured, and she felt his lips brushing her forehead.


	7. Chapter 7

**Close Encounters 3**

* * *

Castle came out of her hospital room and punched Esposito in the shoulder, just hard enough for the man to know he wasn't messing around.

Esposito glared at him and crossed his arms, but there was an understanding.

"You get Jim Beckett?"

"We got him," Esposito said. "He didn't want to go, but we convinced him."

"He has the burner phone-"

"He'll call tomorrow morning by six and check in with us."

"Good," Castle answered, nodding to the three other officers clustered in the hallway outside Kate's room. He felt the urge to give voice to his gratitude, but he knew they wouldn't take it.

"Your watch," Castle said instead, nodding towards the room.

"And you got my partner," Esposito said back, then made a fist, slowly enough for Castle to see it coming, punched him just as hard.

He got the message, turned away from Esposito, but not before the detective added a last word.

"Happy hunting, super spy."

* * *

Ryan had his arms crossed in much the same manner as Esposito had when Castle had left him, but Ryan looked a little more friendly. Castle came down the hall inside the Warehouse and leaned his shoulder against the wall.

The door to the interrogation room was just between them.

Ryan rubbed at the back of his neck and flipped open a notebook. "I did what you asked."

"And?"

"Deleware was pissed that he had to let us in. He said you're-"

"Forget Deleware for a second. What did you find?"

Ryan shook his head and glanced down at his notes. "Five candidates popped up in the search results."

"From Montgomery's war days?"

"Yes."

"Any that correlate to the time frame I gave you?"

"Just one."

Castle stood up straight. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"So out with it, Ry."

Ryan locked his jaw and glared, his fingers coming down to his notebook, touching the page where, presumedly, the name rested.

"Ryan. Come on."

"Smith. His name is Michael Smith, he's got a membership in the Magellan Yacht Club in Westport, he was an attorney for PPC and won a lucrative tobacco lawsuit back in the day. He was also in Special Forces with Montgomery, and there are a couple of points of contact with Maddox and Lockwood."

"It's him. He's our blackmailer."

"Could be," Ryan hedged. "Most likely."

Castle nodded and narrowed his eyes, staring off in the middle distance as he put it all together.

"All right. Let's get this show on the road. You remember how the equipment works?"

"I got your back, Castle."

* * *

Maddox jerked to attention when Castle came in but slouched back into his chair when he saw who it was.

Interesting. So Maddox was expecting someone to come spring him. Someone he needed to be at attention for.

"Hey there, pretty boy."

Maddox growled but said nothing. But a growl was still an answer.

"Your employer isn't coming. You know why, right? Because you failed. Had you managed to actually do your job, Maddox, you'd have gotten sprung. And you know it."

"I did my job."

"I'm not dead. And you're still sitting here."

"I did my job," Maddox repeated, eyes flinty. The yellow light came on just past his head.

"Your employer is going to send in someone who _can_ get the job done."

"You don't know him. You don't-"

"Him? Well, now we've eliminated fifty percent of the population. Thanks."

Maddox pressed his lips together and a muscle in his jaw worked hard. The light stayed off, though, and Castle steepled his fingers, focused on Maddox. Maddox who had _done his job._ Maybe it wasn't his job to outright kill Castle?

"I'm just going to theorize out loud here. You tell me when I get it right."

Maddox's eyes flicked to him and away. No light.

"You were ordered to kill me because I have the resources to discover your boss, drag all his dirty secrets into the light."

No light, but that information was so obvious that it wouldn't register a reaction from Maddox.

"But your boss. . .he's related to this whole mess. He has something to lose if Johanna Beckett's murder comes to light. Not just because he ordered her death, but because his comrades are involved."

Yellow light. Damn right, a yellow light.

"And you know who he is, don't you?"

The light flickered, but stayed yellow. Inconclusive results. Castle was beginning to believe the yellow light was more an indication of a correct assumption on his part than the green light ever could be. Maddox was fighting hard to control his reactions and hardest of all when Castle was right. Maddox knew the man.

"That's why you were sent last of all. You're his pet killer. Coonan - just a hired assassin that you knew of, got him in contact with. And Lockwood - fine, another guy you knew-"

The light extinguished. Castle paused.

"Lockwood. Head of security for this guy? He cleaned up the messes while you did the more sensitive work - work that required a lighter touch."

Yellow light. Steady and strong. Maddox might be ex-Special Forces, but he'd lived as a pet killer for too long, fat and happy despite his training and skills. He'd forgotten how it felt to be out of control, and it was betraying him.

"But what happened, Maddox? You were only a hundred yards away from fifty NYPD officers and only twenty from one of my guys. We caught you without a struggle."

No light.

And that was an answer as well.

Maddox was supposed to be caught. A plan was in place, and Maddox knew he was covered.

"You think you're getting out of here, but you're not. Your boss isn't coming to rescue you, Maddox. You're a tool. Easily replaced."

And Castle left the room.

It was all he was going to get. But it was more than enough.

* * *

Eastman was waiting for him outside, and Ryan came through the door from the observation room.

Castle shook Eastman's hand in thanks, but Eastman had been covering Castle's ass for years now - mostly to hide things from his father, but here lately to right a wrong.

Ryan spoke up. "I think you're right about Montgomery and the rest somehow being affiliated with Maddox's boss. Whoever he is - it would hurt him if the truth is known. It's the only thing that makes sense."

Eastman crossed his arms over his chest and shot Castle a look. But he didn't try to contradict that statement.

"This blackmailer, Michael Smith, he has the file now; he knows who this guy is. We concentrate on getting to him." Castle rubbed at his jaw, felt the exhaustion of the day sinking into his bones. He wanted to go back to the hospital, crawl in with Kate. Not that he didn't trust Esposito, but. . .he trusted himself more.

"I'll do the search," Eastman said quickly. "Ryan couldn't get an address on your Michael Smith - honestly, it sounds like an alias - so I'll do that tonight."

"This morning," Castle smirked, glancing at his watch. "It's already two."

"You need anything more from Maddox?" Eastman asked.

Castle grit his teeth to keep from answering honestly. "No. We've gotten as much out of him as we're going to."

"Then you go home-"

"I won't go home." Castle rubbed his jaw and glanced back at the closed interrogation door. He wanted Maddox strung up for shooting Kate, but he could do very little about it now.

Except kill him.

Now, or later.

"I want a team on Maddox when he's handed over."

"Subtle or prominent?"

"Subtle," Castle said. "I'd do it myself, but I'm afraid I'm not subtle."

Eastman nodded, but Ryan narrowed his eyes. "You think Maddox is gonna be spirited away - disappeared?"

"Yes. I'm almost certain of it."

"I'll have Forster do it," Eastman said, ignoring Ryan's look of indignation.

Castle nodded, realized he'd pitched over the side of sleepless frustration and straight down to recklessness. He needed to sleep, needed to not do the thing he wanted to do-

He wanted Maddox to hurt.

Eastman gripped him by the elbow. "You can't. If you kill him-"

Ryan raised an eyebrow, evidently just now clued in, and Castle realized he'd been clenching his fists.

"I know."

"Castle," Eastman said slowly. "We'll put eyes on him, see where it leads us. We won't let him out of our sight. And then-"

"And then I'll kill him."

Ryan looked uneasy, but he didn't say anything to that.

"What?" Castle asked, lifting an eyebrow. "You want to arrest him? Put him on trial?"

"Yes, actually." Ryan narrowed his eyes. "Yes, I want to arrest him and let a jury decide his fate. And so does Beckett."

So does Beckett.

Castle turned his head away.

"I'm going back to the hospital."

* * *

Kate's eyes flew open at the jarring of the bed; she gasped and clutched at the blankets, swallowing down a harsh flare of pain deep in her chest.

"Sorry, honey. Gotta check your line." Amesha, right? The night nurse.

Kate shivered as the blankets were pulled gently out of her grip and down. Her shoulder ached so badly she felt tears spilling out of her eyes and she sucked in a breath as Amesha checked the IV.

"Okay, okay, honey. All's good." She was drawing the blankets back up. "How's the pain?"

Kate pressed her cheek into the pillow but nothing would alleviate the crunch of her bones in her chest and the thud of her heartbeat pounding in her head. "S-six."

"I'm guessing that's an eight or nine for us mere mortals," Amesha said quietly, her voice coming to Kate in the darkness like a soft hand.

"Could be," she panted, squeezing her eyes shut.

"I'm making a note," Amesha said. "I'll tell the doctor too. Maybe they can adjust your meds."

Kate didn't want more painkillers; she hated the feeling of spinning off into space, like she couldn't hang on. And she'd been fine when she was asleep, never felt better when she was unconscious. Why did they have to keep coming in here and waking her up? All day long, all night - she just wanted to sleep.

"Here, honey, turn over." Amesha was getting an arm up under Kate's armpit, her palm coming to Kate's shoulder, and slowly turning her to lie flat on her stomach.

Kate let out a long breath, brought her fingers to her cheek to swipe at the moisture. "Thank you."

"No problem." And then Amesha was leaving the room.

Kate laid in the darkness, the throb of awareness pulsing in her back like a living beast, angry and awake. She skimmed the tears from her skin, rubbing them off her chin, swiped at her neck until she couldn't keep up anymore; they just kept on coming.

She gave up trying, gulped in hot breaths to at least keep from drowning in it.

And then the door opened, a crack of light, and she moaned; not again. She couldn't-

A whisper, "Kate?"

Shit. Castle. She jerked her hand towards her cheek but he was already easing his way inside, coming to the bed, hovering over her. She closed her eyes tightly, and his fingers skimmed over her still-damp hair.

"I know you're awake. Amesha told me she came in. Kate?"

She couldn't keep it back any longer, sucked in a breath that betrayed her.

"Hey, hey, hey," he murmured, crowding in close over her. She couldn't even move to get away, find her own space, and he just kept coming. "Kate. Love."

Her eyes opened and she saw the dark outline of his broad shoulders, the edge of his chin, no more. Not at this angle.

"Kate," he whispered.

She heard the grief in it, the _guilt_, but she couldn't do anything to stop that either.

"Kate, I'm crawling in," he murmured, and she felt the bed dip, the heat of him like a wall. She managed to shift her legs back to give his some room, and then he was stroking his fingers through her hair and tugging the blankets up over them.

"Rick," she breathed out. His mouth came to her forehead, a warm and pressed-lips kiss that did nothing to dull the pain, but seemed to do everything else.

"I'm so sorry, Kate. I'm so sorry-"

She managed to curl her fingers at the warm, scratchy skin of his jaw and neck, closed her eyes again. The tears still pushed their way out, the fault of pain and painkillers both, but he didn't try to stop them, and she couldn't if she tried.

"Cold," she whispered then, swallowing hard past the choke of it in her throat.

He scooted carefully closer, drew one leg over hers, slung his arm low at her waist. It felt good, like she was being weighted down to the earth, and she sucked in a long, shaky breath past her tears.

"You're gonna be okay. I promise. You're going to be okay."

* * *

Kate woke to the slow tug of fingers through her hair and the hard edges of ribs catching against hers every time she breathed. Her cheek felt bruised and she shifted immediately, turning her head, and realized she was lying on Castle.

"Rick?"

"Hey." His voice was low and vibrated through her. She drew her arms in against his ribs, found the pain manageable, let her eyes slip shut to avoid the early morning light coming in through the window. "How you feeling?"

"Mm, okay. Tired."

"Yeah? Good. You seemed. . .not so great last night."

She couldn't remember last night. "When did you get here?"

"Around three or so. Amesha had just woken you to check your blood pressure. You don't remember?"

"No, not. . .no." She curled her fingers at his ribs and nuzzled her head down into the seam where his arm met his chest, breathing him in.

"She came in before her shift was over with new orders. They switched your painkiller, gave you something else. The surgeon thought maybe you were having a reaction to the other. You feel any better this morning?"

"Maybe," she admitted, but she felt like she'd been wrung out by thick, meaty hands and then flattened with the heavy end of a mallet. "Hurts but. . .feel more awake."

"Good," he sighed, as if in relief. He brought his hand to her ear and left it there, and the weight of it seemed to make her relax.

And then she remembered.

"Didn't you - Maddox. You said Maddox-"

"I interrogated him last night."

When he didn't continue, she huffed and shifted to prop her chin on his chest, felt something pull in her back, but not much pain. And she was only mildly drugged out. "And?"

He had shoved the pillows up under his neck so that he was looking down at her. His fingers played with her hair and she realized it was a mess of snaggled curls, but he seemed enchanted by it.

"Castle."

"Yeah?"

"What did Maddox say? If you're here, then he told you something."

"I'm here because you're here."

"Cute, but you need to talk to me. I hate it when you leave me in the dark."

"Right, yes. I remember you yelling about that."

She grunted and frowned at him, felt his leg shift between hers and realized he was probably uncomfortable like this. She could use that to her advantage. Kate curled her fingers in his undershirt, taking in a deep breath of his scent - like wood and winter - and felt him jerk at her touch.

"Kate."

She skimmed her fingertips along the warm skin left bare by their tangle in the bed, pressed her nose back into the space under his arm. He shifted again and she grinned.

"Kate, what are you doing?"

"You gonna tell me about that interrogation, super spy?"

"You should rest," he growled and snagged her fingers before she could go any farther. Not that she really could; this was about the extent of her reach. Or her stamina.

"Stop being a bully and tell me what's going on with my mother's case."

"Kate," he sighed and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. She hated not being able to push off against his chest and stare him down, make him tell her, and now that his hands were gripping her fingers so tightly, she had no recourse.

"Castle, come on."

"Kate, you've been shot-"

"Exactly. I deserve some answers."

He sighed and she worked her legs free of his, drew her arms up into her chest and tried to roll off of him. When she couldn't get enough momentum, he had to help, and she gritted her teeth at him even as she had to accept it.

He kept her on her side and she pulled her knees up to her chest to give herself some balance. His palm lingered on her shoulder, skated down to her elbow. He looked so tender, as if breathing hard would knock her over, and she hated it.

"Kate, you should-"

"Stop telling me what I should do. Stop treating me like someone you have to _protect, _Castle_. _I'm an NYPD detective, not some kind of victim. I want to know what's going on."

He turned his face away from her and she growled, reached out too fast to snag the hem of his tshirt. Her back flared in protest, that ache setting up residence in her chest, but she ignored it to grip his shirt tighter, drag him in towards her.

He came, even though she didn't have the strength really to make him, and he turned his eyes back to her with something like resignation in them.

"This doesn't work with us, Castle, unless we're together in it - equal. You can't be who you are if you're worried about me, and I can't be who _I_ am if I'm being coddled."

He nodded slowly and reached down to untangle her fingers from his shirt. And then he sank down onto the pillow so that their eyes were level. It was too close, it was so very intimate, and but it made her feel less like a wounded bird.

"He's getting transferred to NYPD custody this morning. We both know what that means, but Kate. . .I won't let him get away. He won't get away with what he did to you."

* * *

She was adorable. She was so determined. And she was a hot mess.

She kept trying to _seduce_ him into speaking, using her fingers and the slow slide of her knee, but Kate. . ._Kate, love,_. . .she'd been shot. Sex was the last thing on his mind.

He carefully squeezed her fingers and propped his head up on his hand as he looked over at her in the bed. It was early, and the morning shift nurse had come in only an hour ago to check on her vitals, so they had some time. Beckett was back, trying for fierce, but the hospital gown and the air-dried curls around her head, the pale moon of her face and the way her eyes kept wandering off told him that she couldn't keep it up.

She was a little broken, and he hated it, but at least she was trying.

"And how do you know that this is the same Smith?"

"It's a guess, but it's an educated guess," he replied. He couldn't help moving his fingers to skim her cheekbone. She reached up to shrug him off and winced instead, closing her eyes.

He removed his hand for her, taking in a shallow breath, but then he unfurled his fingers and did it again. Because if she were whole, he'd still be touching her. He loved touching her, loved the early mornings in bed with her and stroking her face, relearning the lines of her body when she was still sleep-warm and only halfway aware. Before coffee, before spy missions or calls from the 12th about a murder. When she was still, well, Kate.

So he touched her, and he told her what she wanted to know.

"Eastman is looking for Michael Smith. When he gets an address, Ryan and Esposito and I will take him on."

She was smiling at him, like a break of sunshine through the storm clouds of pain, and he tried to figure out what he'd said to give her that look.

"What?"

"You're taking my boys with you?"

He huffed a laugh at her and ran his finger down the line of her neck, how soft her skin was. "Taking Esposito and Ryan, yes. They're your boys, huh?"

"My team, my boys."

"And what am I?" he murmured, cupping her jaw and brushing his thumb over her bottom lip.

She grinned a little wider. "It'd be too corny for words, Castle."

"Oh?"

"You're no boy."

He grinned back and leaned in to press a barely there kiss to those lips, feathered back to her cheek, humming at her ear. "What am I, Kate?"

"Mine," she murmured back. "You're mine."

* * *

She stayed sitting up in the circle of his arms, her back lightly touching his chest, the bed raised behind him. She breathed slowly, shallowly, and her eyes kept closing.

"Kate-"

"I'm fine. I'm fine," she chanted.

She wasn't fine, clearly, but she was evidently going to push herself to do more, be more. He couldn't say anything against it because he knew if he tried to make her stop, she'd only go at it that much harder.

"Maybe you should-"

"I'm _fine_. Let me do this."

He kept his forearms brace against his thighs, his legs in a diamond position as she sat between them, her hands gripping him so tightly, he knew he'd have bruises. But she was keeping herself there, leaning against him with the portion of her back _not_ recently shot, being a completely stubborn ass of a woman, and slowly her fingers eased from their death grip.

She didn't exactly relax, but she didn't look like she was going to pass out anymore either.

"So," she said slowly. "Maddox gets transferred but you have eyes on him."

"In approximately three hours," he answered, checking his watch and then shifting his arm to loosely circle around her waist. He felt better when he could touch her, which was needy and ridiculous on his part, really it was, but he couldn't help it.

She'd been shot. She'd stopped breathing. He saw the life dim in her eyes and-

"The idea being that when his boss comes for him-"

"I'll be ready," he said. "And yes, I will let you know the moment anything happens."

"When do Espo and Ryan get here?"

"At six. Eastman should still be at the office, so we'll head there."

She nodded her head carefully against his shoulder. "So maybe. . .you should shower. Get dressed. What happened to that shirt my dad brought you?"

He was wearing the blood-stained one, having come straight from the Warehouse. "It's on the back of the chair. Why? You think I stink, Beckett?"

"You smell good," she murmured, and he knew it was the drugs making her honest. He liked it.

"I smell good?"

"Shut up. You need to shower. Get presentable."

"Worried what your boys will think of their mom's new boyfriend?"

She grunted and dug her fingers into his forearm in warning, but he only grinned, buried a smile into the top of her head.

"I will, Kate. I'll shower at the office."

She sighed against him, stiffened as her back shifted and met the curve of his rib. He kept carefully still until her shoulders eased down again, her breath coming out in a long, shaky exhale.

"When I leave with your boys, you should lie down and rest, Kate."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll probably sleep away the day, just like yesterday. I hate it."

"But it's good for you, helps you heal."

She had her mouth open to respond to that, but a knock sounded on her hospital room door. Beckett grunted and tried to sit up - apparently she didn't want her _boys_ seeing her spooned up with him, but he didn't let her go far.

"Come in," he called out, surprised when they didn't automatically come through the door anyway.

But it wasn't Ryan or Esposito.

"Hey, just wanted to check on you, Kate."

It was the heart surgeon who had saved her life - same surgeon who had switched her painkiller earlier this morning as well.

"Dr. Davidson," Castle said, shifting in the bed so that he was still supporting Kate, but offering his hand to the guy.

"Rick," the doctor nodded, shaking hands. His eyes were on Kate, but they trailed to Castle once in assessment before finally staying on Beckett. "How are you feeling now, Kate?"

She grimaced through a smile. "Better. Less woozy and nauseous."

She'd been feeling nauseated? She hadn't told him that.

"Good, good," Dr Davidson was saying. He held out a hand to Kate and she offered hers; his touch was friendly - too friendly, Castle thought - and Davidson patted the back of her hand with a winning smile.

"Thanks for coming by," Castle said pointedly. Did the man not _see _Castle practically draped around Beckett? Or well, no, Kate had sat up a little more and he'd had to leave one leg dangling off the bed and okay, but _really_?

"Kate, you need anything, have the nurse page me. I'm just a surgeon, but I know people." He winked at Kate and did that stupid gun-pointing-finger thing that seriously got on Castle's nerves, because there was no way anyone would ever point a gun at someone who had _just been shot_.

Okay, calm down.

He'd saved her life. Dr Josh Davidson had saved her life.

"Seriously," Castle said quietly, reining it in to shake the man's hand once more. "Thank you for everything."

He felt Kate's hand come to his knee in a soft stroke, her fingers squeezing, and she turned her head to him, all of it there in her eyes - how much she understood, how much she'd grieved as well.

For him. When he'd been stabbed.

Somehow, he'd forgotten that. How she'd been in this same spot with him lying in a hospital bed.

"Ah, well. I'll leave you to get your rest. Rest, Kate." Dr Davidson backed away, then headed out the door. Castle let out a long breath.

Kate was still watching him though, her eyes so dark and beautiful on his. "You okay?"

He nodded but felt his professional demeanor, his stoicism, begin to disintegrate the longer she looked at him.

She melted a little, her shoulder coming against his chest, her mouth to his jaw. "I know, Rick. I know. But I'm okay, you're okay. We survived."

He nodded again and pressed his hand to her head, his arm curled at her neck, and lowered his nose to her hair to breathe her in.

They were both still breathing.


	8. Chapter 8

**Close Encounters 3**

* * *

Beckett was asleep when Esposito came in with Ryan. Castle nodded to both of them and her boys stood awkwardly in the room while Castle shrugged on his suit jacket, checked his gun. He didn't kiss her good-bye - that really would be pushing it - but he did squeeze her ankle as he left, so thin under the bedcovers.

Ryan handed him an address.

"This is him?"

"This is him."

He nodded and tucked the address into his pocket, strode out of the hospital with each of her boys flanking him.

* * *

Michael Smith lived in a brownstone in Chelsea. He had a small apartment according to the specs, but it was possible, judging by the unoccupied studio next door, that he also owned it as well and had converted the space.

Eastman's details had been sparse, so the Smith evidently had the means to bury quite a lot of his personal information. Ryan had printed out photos from a real estate site online to give them an idea on layout - two bedroom, one bath, fireplaces, high ceilings, hardwood floor, modern conveniences. A bachelor pad, but one well appointed.

Castle rode in the passenger seat of Esposito's car, Ryan in the back making plans.

"I think entry will be no problem. There's no lobby to speak of, just the foyer and the stairs. The fire escape is viable."

"He better not run," Esposito said, and Castle glanced over to see the tick in his jaw. Castle didn't like the detective so much, but the man's relentless sense of brotherhood had earned his respect. He knew Esposito would have his back in taking down this conspiracy, if only for Beckett's sake.

They pulled up to the address just when the silence in the car began to be awkward, too tense, and Castle popped open the door with a relieved breath. He wanted this over, wanted this done.

He checked his weapon again and realized it'd become a nervous gesture, fueled by adrenaline and distraction, and he concentrated on putting his mind to the task at hand. Beckett was fine. There were three officers outside her hospital room, plus he'd asked Eastman to check on her. He trusted Eastman with Beckett.

"You ready?" Esposito asked, gun drawn as he nodded towards the building.

Red, bold, the door's brass knocker beckoned. Answers were just past that door.

"Let's go."

* * *

Michael Smith opened the door and even though he didn't flinch, he might as well have.

Esposito smiled, predatory, and Castle was content to let him have the lead in this.

"Hello," the detective said slowly. "Decided to make a house call."

Castle had his weapon in hand at his side, but he kept his eyes dead on Smith, catalogued every reaction, every swallow in his throat, every quirk of his eyebrow. He stayed silent, let himself be the enforcer, and saw Smith's eyes dart to him and then away.

He was scared.

"Detective Esposito," Smith said finally, not even attempting a ruse. "You shouldn't be here."

"You have something we need," Espo answered.

"It was given to me by your Captain."

"Well, I got some friends here that think it should be in safer hands." Espo jerked his head towards his companions.

"We don't know you," Ryan added, a slight shrug of his shoulders. "And we don't trust you either."

"Isn't it enough that Montgomery did?"

"No," Castle rasped. "Where's the file?"

Smith's eyes went to Castle again. "I know who you are, Agent Castle. You haven't been very quiet about this case."

"I didn't mean to be quiet," he said, keeping his voice low, threatening. "I meant to shake things up. Looks like I did."

"And it got Montgomery killed. And Detective Beckett-"

"Where's the file?" Castle interrupted. He wasn't here to be judged by this man. "I know you're not stupid enough to keep it on you."

"It's in a safe place. And it's existence keeps you safe as well."

"I don't need to be kept safe. What I need are answers." Castle shoved open the door and barreled his way inside.

Smith resisted and Castle plowed through him, pushing him to one side as he heard the door shut after Esposito and Ryan.

"You're making a grave mistake," Smith growled.

"I don't know you. I don't owe you anything," Castle bullied. "The only person that matters to me is Beckett, and she will have that file."

"Over my dead body."

"It would be my pleasure."

* * *

Beckett woke to the harsh sounds of her phone, surprised to hear it at all. Castle must have left it in here for her, but where had he left it?

She swallowed past the dry feeling in her mouth and scanned the room for the source. The bedside table was pulled up with a tray that still held an unappetizing breakfast, and beside it was her white-cased phone.

It took a strange effort to lift her arm, like moving through water, and she realized she was using the side on which she'd gotten shot. Kate sucked in a breath but the pain was hazy, far off, so she must be in the thick of the good drugs.

Still, probably not a good idea. Beckett sat up slowly, digging her elbow into the bed to lever herself upright, and then leaned forward shakily for her phone.

By that time, she'd missed the call but she checked the alert and saw it was Ryan.

Why was Ryan calling her but not Castle?

She felt smothered with the effects of the drugs, weighed down, but she called Ryan back, pressing the phone to her ear with a trembling hand. Her eyes kept slipping shut.

"Beckett?"

"Ryan, what's-"

"He's going to kill him. This isn't right."

Her heart pounded too hard, slamming blood through her already overworked system. "Who? Who's killing-" Castle?

"Agent Castle. He's going to kill Smith - he's going to-"

"Wait, wait. Ryan. Where are you?"

"At Michael Smith's. I stepped outside to call you. Beckett, Esposito won't stop him. He's-"

"Let me talk to him."

"Espo?"

"Castle," she growled and had to close her eyes to fight through a wave of exhaustion as it crashed over her. "Go back in there and hand the phone over to him. I don't care what it takes."

She swallowed hard, listened to the sounds of Ryan breathing quickly as he opened a door, carried the phone back to her CIA agent. She had to keep making a fist and digging her nails into her palm to stay awake, stay with it, because she wasn't about to let Castle do something _treasonous_ just for this damn case.

"Here, you have to - Beckett wants to talk to you," she heard faintly. And then voices raised, the slur of someone else, a voice she didn't recognize, and through it all, the calm and controlled tones of the man she knew all too well.

And then he took the phone.

He didn't say a word, didn't say her name, barely breathed into the receiver, but she knew he was there. She knew it.

"Rick Castle, don't you dare."

There was a long silence and she let it go on long enough to make him wonder, make him start thinking about something other than vengeance or solving this case or getting answers. She knew how single-minded his focus could be when it came to her. When she'd promised her father that Castle would be okay interrogating Maddox, she'd forgotten about the way Castle sometimes clutched her at night, the look in his eyes when that bullet had caught her in the back.

He was a professional, but she'd forgotten he was also in love with her.

And that made him dangerous.

"Rick, if you do this. . .if you torture someone for that damn file. . .if you _kill_ him, then I can't save you. I can't bring you back from that place."

"Beckett. You need-"

"Rick," she said again, letting some of the desperation color her voice. "I need you more. And if this takes you away from me, I will never get over it. I will never be right again."

* * *

He hung up on her.

Castle gripped the phone, his back towards the tableau playing out in Smith's own study, listened to Ryan arguing with Esposito.

What else was he supposed to do?

This man held the answers, and Castle, given time and a shower curtain to catch the blood, could get those answers.

He stepped back onto the plastic they'd laid on the floor, turned around to survey the scene. The older man was duct taped to his desk chair, fingers exposed and nails bleeding from some preliminary work, his chest rising and falling in great gulps, nostrils flared in rage, the whites of his eyes exposed as they rolled between Castle and the detectives.

Her boys. They shouldn't be involved in this. He should've made them wait outside. He knew better.

Damn, this case had seriously messed him up. He was jumping in before he had time to think, flying by the seat of his pants, and that wasn't his m.o. on these kinds of things. Training and discipline had been his constant companions in the service, and now it was like some baser, more primal part of him was thrashing to get out.

It had to stop. She was right. He had to stop.

"Boys."

Esposito bared his teeth as he lifted his head, evidently not happy with Castle appropriating the moniker, but Ryan just looked relieved. As if he could see that the beast had been tamed and the sophisticated spy was back.

Not entirely true. The beast made him reckless, but the spy was a cold-blooded killer - of course, it was in the name of patriotism and national security.

But either of those personas was dangerous.

He made a fist around his phone and let its presence remind him.

He might be a CIA agent, he might occasionally be an assassin, he might be seething with grief and vengeance, but he was also in love with Kate Beckett.

"Boys, make yourselves scarce."

"What?" Ryan gasped. "No. No, Beckett said-"

"Now, Ry."

Maybe it was the nickname, maybe it was the calm in his eyes, but Ryan glanced to Esposito and slowly made his way out of the apartment. The other detective began to follow, eyes narrowed at Castle.

He paused at the CIA agent but said nothing, just gave him a long look.

Castle kept his eyes on Smith and Esposito walked out the door.

"Mr Smith," he started, walking forward slowly.

"So now that there are no witnesses-"

"Unless you get the urge to tell me where that file is, I'd suggest you keep your mouth shut. They think you're helping us, keeping us safe by blackmailing this guy. Whoever he is. But you're not in it for that, are you? You just like having the power."

Smith's nostrils flared again, but Castle pulled his butterfly knife out of his pocket and flipped it open, let the man see the blade.

"You know what? I don't care. But don't think you're doing me any favors."

Castle placed the knife against Smith's wrist, took a slow breath in and then sliced straight back through the duct tape. Smith made a noise, but Castle ignored him, moved to the other side to cut the tape.

Castle left it at that - the man could get out easily enough now - and the agent slowly backed up, closing his knife and pocketing it, his gun still in his other hand.

"I don't care what you do," Castle said quietly. "I don't care what deal you think you're making. I won't abide by it-"

"If you go looking for this man, he will-"

"I don't look; I hunt. And when I find him - and make no mistake, I will find him - I will put a bullet in his brain. You tell him that."

Castle turned his back and walked out of the apartment.

* * *

She called Ryan's phone, but he didn't answer, so she called Castle's phone next, and still-

No answer.

Beckett sat stiffly in the bed and tried to push down the sick sensation of falling that kept rising up in her. She wasn't falling, no one was falling. _Calm down._

While the new painkillers allowed her more control over her emotions and a measure of awareness, she still struggled against a sense of doom, inevitable and assured.

Beckett took a slow breath in and counted to ten before she released it. Did it again until the frantic pace of her counting slowed and her heart with it.

When the anxiety had washed out, there was still some latent urgency underneath it all. She called his phone again, listened to it ring and ring into nothing. He didn't have voicemail; he'd never had voicemail. She messaged him, _Call me._

She waited, kept herself rigid in the bed, felt her awareness and her concentration returning slowly. She layered herself in the facts of the case to keep her mind occupied and alert: Hal Lockwood had shot Raglan, McCallister, and finally Montgomery; Cole Maddox had been sent to kill Castle but she'd stepped in front of the bullet; Castle had found Maddox and interrogated him; Maddox was being transferred to police custody any moment now.

There was more, but those seemed the most important pieces. This Smith person - she didn't know him, didn't understand how a file could possibly save Castle's life. He'd made no mention of that, only of how Smith was making a deal to protect the Montgomerys and Beckett herself.

That wasn't good enough. They'd shot at Castle, not her. And a blackmail scheme was how this whole damn thing began; she wasn't interested in preserving the lies and secrecy.

She needed him to call her back.

She glanced to the clock and was stunned to see that an _hour_ had gone by without her noticing.

Beckett put a fist into the mattress and tested her strength. Weak but existent. She might be able to do this. She could definitely do this.

The slide of her legs against the sheet was easy enough; her knees curled in and then her feet were hanging over the edge. She took a slow, shallow breath and tested her muscles, flexing her thighs, her feet, gripping the edges of the bed with her hands and tensing her biceps.

And then her shoulders. She waited for it, the pain, but it was a dull ache that throbbed in time with her breathing, her heart beating, and she could handle it.

These were much better drugs.

Beckett put all of her weight on her right hand, leaned into the mattress, and slowly slid one foot to the floor.

It wasn't in her nature to hesitate at difficult tasks, but she did just then. Just a moment's pause, wondering, and then she slid her other foot to the floor.

And she stood.

* * *

Castle's heart was beating hard when he made it back to the hospital. She'd texted him, called, but he couldn't - it was something he needed to do face to face, explain himself, ask for forgiveness, whatever it was she needed. A phone call wouldn't fix the disappointment he'd heard in her voice.

When the elevator doors opened onto her floor, he stepped out without looking, nearly ran into-

"Beckett," he growled. Kate Beckett stood with three police officers haunting her steps, one who looked like he was hovering just out of her sight, ready to catch her.

Fuck. And now he remembered - Eastman had left to watch Maddox getting transferred.

Kate swayed on her feet and he reached for her, grabbing her by the hips to avoid pulling on the arm at her bad side. All three officers breathed sighs of relief.

"Castle," she gasped. "I called you-"

"I didn't want to have this conversation over the phone," he said, gently trying to herd her away from the main corridor. She came with him, her steps slow. "Just where do you think you're going?" He glanced over his shoulder at the nearest police officer. "And why the hell were you letting her?"

"You didn't answer. And it's not like they can stop me."

He glared at the second police officer, a blushing kid with fat fingers. "You guys have anything to say in your defense?"

The kid opened his mouth but Beckett slapped him on the chest. "I told them you called and needed me there. And I didn't really give them much choice. And you _didn't answer your phone_, Castle."

"So you got out of bed to come _find _me?"

She stared resolutely back at him and his chest squeezed. Stupid, stupid. "You're crazy. You just got shot, Beckett. You can't be doing stupid things like walking around the city looking for me-"

"Then don't do stupid, crazy things and then leave me in the dark, _ignoring me,_ and I wouldn't have to."

He stopped yelling at her long enough to realize they had an audience, so he carefully let go of her to appropriate a wheelchair from an orderly. The man gave it up good-naturedly and Castle nudged Kate down into it. She sat stiffly, her back away from the seat, and he rolled her down to her room, her three protective officers following like baby ducks.

And apparently just as effective.

"Fine," he said. "I won't be stupid when it comes to you, so long as you're not stupid when it comes to me."

She made a noise at that, but he thought maybe there was some amusement there.

"Deal," she said quietly, and he pushed open the door to her hospital room. "Now tell me you didn't torture Michael Smith."

"Only a little."

* * *

"You got out of bed to come find me," he sighed at her.

Beckett kicked him in the shin and winced even as she did; he caught her ankle and lifted her legs back into the bed. She sighed, trapped again.

"I want to get out of here," she muttered at him.

"Give yourself time to heal-"

"But there's - things are happening out there, Castle, and I'm stuck in this damn bed. I don't want to have to depend on-"

"On me?"

She glanced swiftly at him, but he was giving her a cocky little grin. He _liked_ that she had to depend on him, didn't he? Bastard. "I meant hearing things second hand. Not seeing it with my own eyes. Having Ryan call me before you did something stupid. I should've been there-"

"Never."

"I should've been there," she insisted. He shook his head but she reached out and snagged him by the wrist. "You don't get to take this case away from me, Castle."

He went still, his head down as if he was studying her fingers wrapped over his forearm. She waited for him to absorb that truth, waited for him to understand. He slowly rotated his hand and adjusted her hold on him, tangling his fingers with hers.

"I'm not trying to take your mother's case away from you, Kate."

She waited still, because even if he hadn't done it on purpose, he was still keeping her in the dark, chasing after leads without giving her all the information, making decisions unilaterally.

He sat down on the bed at her hip, still hanging on to her hand. "I don't mean to. I only want. . .you were shot, Kate. I'm not used to people jumping in front of bullets for me."

"It was only one bullet," she said, winced at the flash of horror in his eyes. Okay, he wasn't ready to joke about it. "Castle, I'm a cop. Part of our oath is to protect-"

"I know. I do know that. But it's like you said before. This doesn't work if we're not equal partners. You can't act like my life is worth more than yours. You can't-"

"Castle," she sighed, shaking her head at him. "I didn't _plan_ on getting shot. I didn't want to get shot. I was trying to push you out of the way, you idiot."

"But-"

"But you're solid as a rock, and you just don't move."

He huffed at that but finally raised his eyes to look at her.

"I was trying to shove you down and draw my weapon. It just - didn't happen. And besides that, Castle, you can't ask me to _not_ save your life. Would it be fair for me to ask you that?"

He groaned and tilted his head back. "I already hate this conversation."

She let out a little laugh, quiet and small in deference to the ache starting up in her back, and squeezed his fingers a little harder.

"This is just our life, Castle. This is our life together. When you were stabbed. . ."

His startlingly blue eyes came back down to meet hers, intense and curious, vivid in the noon light coming through the window.

"That was all my fault, Rick. Coonan. . .you'd never have been involved if it wasn't for me. You wouldn't have gone to his office if I hadn't been so damn impatient. We should've done that together, but instead-"

"Instead I handcuffed you to my bed."

"And not the good kind," she murmured.

He let out a laugh at that, a strangled thing but still, it held some amusement. "Kate, you know I don't blame you for-"

"You may not, but I do. And your father does. And anyone else who knows the truth of that situation - they know what I did, Castle. The role I played in getting you hurt."

"How did we end up talking about me?" he muttered. "We're talking about you getting shot. That is such a bigger deal-"

"It's not at all. It's the same deal. Castle, I will do whatever it takes to save your life. Just as you. . ." She shrugged at him and couldn't finish it, couldn't put the words together because even though she knew, she didn't like it.

"Just as I would do the same," he said, filling in the blanks. "I'll find whoever is behind your mother's death, Kate, and I will-"

She gripped his hand harder to shut him up, shook her head. "There's no more _I_ in this, Castle. You and me. Partners."

She could see him swallowing that down, the way her statement felt true but the individual elements didn't sit well with him. He didn't want her to risk herself for him, but he was kidding himself if he thought she wouldn't.

"Can we at least limit the foolish behavior?" he sighed.

"You mean you _won't_ go torturing potential informants?"

He narrowed his eyes at her and she finally got a crack in his armor, a small, curling lip of a smile.

She smiled back. "Now that we've cleared that up, why don't you tell me what Smith said? And don't forget the juicy parts."


	9. Chapter 9

**Close Encounters 3**

* * *

Castle sighed and wiped the white board clear of medical notations, the names of nurses, and drug information the doctors would certainly need. But Beckett wanted a _timeline_ and if he didn't do this, she'd do it herself.

Despite the fact that she couldn't lift her arms over her head.

"Okay, let's start with how this got taken out of your control, Castle."

"Out of _my_ control?" he snarked towards the board. "What happened to _there is no I in this_?"

She was smirking at him, wasn't she? His back was turned to her, but he knew it.

"Okay, so at the far left put down the phone conversation you had with your father."

He made a note, and the time, and started bullet-noting the details. "He said it was no longer a CIA matter, and we were turning Maddox over to the NYPD. Well, he ordered me to do it, so of course I got pissed-"

"Leave out the commentary, super spy."

He turned around and raised an eyebrow at her; she was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, her elbows on her knees to keep herself propped up, her hair in a glorious and sexy mess around her shoulders.

"You should wear your hair like that more often."

"Back on task, buddy. The phone call."

He turned to the whiteboard and made another note. "He said it was police jurisdiction, not CIA. He claimed I was weak, and you were bad for my professionalism-"

"Your father pisses me off."

He smirked at the board where she couldn't see and wrote the last of it. "And. . .oh. Actually, he told me he was _protecting my own_. Meaning. . ."

"You," she answered. "He meant you, Castle."

He turned around to look at her, mouth parted to speak, but nothing came out.

"How did you know he'd been gotten to?" she said quietly, leaning a little forward, her shoulders hunching. She had to be exhausted, sitting up like that. He couldn't understand why she forced it.

Okay, he could. He knew exactly why she pushed herself.

"Black used the compromise code. It's. . .actually an inside joke. If he and I ever had a joke in common, that would be the one."

"What's the code?" she asked, frowning at him.

Did she know what she was asking for? Evidently not. "A line from 'Cool Hand Luke' - _what we've got here is a failure to communicate_."

When he looked up at her, she was grinning widely. "I love that movie."

"Me too. And right before that line, he says something about _don't take that tone with me_. And it was funny to me, as a kid, because my father said that all the time in training."

"To you. Did you and your father watch that movie together?"

Castle tapped the expo marker against the railing at the bottom of the whiteboard hung on the wall. "No. I quoted the line at him once and he actually stopped my training for the day and let me go. We never lived together, you know."

"You didn't?"

He shrugged. "I went to boarding school."

"But. . .summers?"

"Camps or training." He shook his head, couldn't explain it. "Anyway, that line had just - he recognized himself in it I guess. So 'failure to communicate' kinda became this thing with us. Black is pretty big on procedure and safety protocols and all that-"

"He must really _love_ you now," she teased, a smile dancing at her lips.

"Yeah, exactly. I keep going off the reservation. I'm a pretty big disappointment."

"I'd say you were pretty big, Castle, yeah. But hardly a disappointment."

He huffed out a laugh, that wonderful burn of arousal and pride running through his blood, and he watched her smiling at him, mirth in her eyes, and he could almost forget that she'd just been shot.

Almost.

She pressed her lips together and he saw the shimmer of pain travel through her. He took a step forward and she shook her head once to him; he waited where he was, waited her out, even though all he wanted to do was lay her flat on her stomach and make her rest.

She lifted her head. "M-kay. So." She closed her eyes slowly, opened them again. "He said your cute code. And you knew someone had gotten to him. Where was he?"

Where was. . . "Oh, Black? He'd just landed."

"From?"

"Well, I don't know. That's kind of the point. He was on Air Force Once. Which I am probably not supposed to tell you. Damn. I need to get a list of rules, I really do-"

"Castle."

He paused, lifted an eyebrow at her.

"Your father was with the President. And someone got to him there? On the plane?"

"I see what you mean."

"It doesn't necessarily have to be someone on that plane with him, but someone who can _get_ to someone on that plane. I mean - could you reach Black while he was in the air?"

Castle stared before the whiteboard, but his eyes were blind to it. Instead he was thinking, his mind spinning. "No. Actually. I don't have that kind of clearance."

"Black's own son can't reach him, and you're in the CIA, Castle. Which means to contact someone on that plane, to contact Black - it takes a lot more pull than you've got."

"I got no pull."

"That's not true. You kidnapped an NYPD detective last year, and you got away with it. You got some pull."

He let a slow smile spread across his lips, crinkle his eyes in that way that he knew she liked. "I pulled you, huh?"

She pressed her mouth into a line but her eyes were smiling. "Okay, super spy, think with me on this. Before your father got in touch with you - someone had to have gotten in touch with him. Can you. . .ask him who it was?"

He swallowed and capped the Expo marker, took a breath. He should do this. He had to do this. "I can. I'll ask him."

"So get out your phone."

Asking favors of his father was only asking for trouble.

* * *

She watched the tension in his shoulders, his back turned to her. She wasn't even consciously paying attention to the words he spoke, just the broken rhythm of them, the fits and starts, the arrested and strangled nature of his conversation.

She really hated his father. And not because Agent Black had been right about her - about how she was a weakness to him, and a detriment to his career, and might some day soon get him killed over her mother's case - but because Agent Black treated him like shit.

And Castle didn't even see it.

She'd made a promise to herself nearly six months ago that she'd be good for him, she'd be what he deserved, but it flared up in her, hotly, as Castle was stonewalled again and again by his cold, withholding father. Her promise burned brightly in her.

Castle had come home with her after he'd been stabbed, of course he had, but once he'd recovered and done his therapy and gone back to the job, he kept coming home with her. To her. And he was in town for only a handful of days at a time so she figured _why not? _and she let him stay, and it was so good.

But there'd been more than that, even then, and there was more than that now. He was her home now, he was the reason her fingers gentled or her mind changed or her tone softened. He was a good man who had been twisted by his job, bent by a father who was supposed to look out for him, protect him, love him.

So Kate Beckett had promised to do it instead, do it better - look out for him, protect him, love him.

Castle hung up and turned back to her, his eyes flat. "He. . ."

"Castle?"

He shook his head like a dog, like he was trying to dislodge some terrible thought. "You don't want to know what he said. But basically. No. He denies it."

"Castle," she whispered, biting her bottom lip at the look in his eyes. Had he always let her see that in him? Surely not. She'd known nothing of his fathers treatment of him except the smirking statements he'd made about Agent Black on that first case together. He'd never looked so much like a lost little boy as he did right now. "Castle, come here. Don't make me come get you."

His head jerked up at that, a sliver of a sad smile working into his lips, and he came towards her on the bed. She leaned forward into him, pressing her cheek against his sternum and doing what she could to wrap her arms around his waist. Her back stretched, but she ignored it; the drugs still buoyed her above the pain.

"Kate," he sighed. His lips came to her temple and she wished she were whole, just so she could rise up against him, hold him tightly to herself and feel his arms come around her. "Kate, he wouldn't give me a name. But I'm almost one hundred percent certain it was someone actually on that plane."

Shit. On the _President's_ plane.

She turned her mouth into his shirt and breathed in, a reminder of all that was still good and right in her life.

Rick Castle.

* * *

He ate a lunch he scavenged from vending machines and her food tray, cajoling her to at least give the blackberry fusion jello a chance. She did, nose wrinkled in disdain the whole time, and swished it around in her mouth before swallowing it. He'd been the one to fill out the food menu earlier this morning, and he couldn't blame her for not liking it.

But he thought it was more than just aversion to semi-solids and fruity jello. When she stopped eating altogether, he coaxed some scrambled eggs (breakfast for lunch was always a hit, right?) down her throat before he realized she was tired.

Damn it. She was probably exhausted and here he was trying to silly her into eating eggs that smelled like a locker room and had sat in their own runny grease.

He had the whiteboard filled with all the details they could recall about the last few weeks' worth of events - Raglan, McCallister, Lockwood, the hangar, Maddox. She was picking at the edge of the food tray with her thumb and studying his handiwork, so he dropped the marker back to the rail and leaned against the bed.

She turned away from the board so she could lean against her good shoulder, her arm curled into her chest, her back to him. "Captain Montgomery-"

He stroked her arm when she didn't continue, but she sat up again, still struggling against everything it seemed, and she moved to curl around her knees. Beckett winced and pressed her face into her thighs, then stiffened up like she couldn't take that position either.

He wished she would eat more, but she still ignored the lunch getting cold on her tray and looked at him instead.

"Why did he. . ."

Castle leaned forward, wrapped his fingers around her ankle. She sat there for a minute longer and he had to resist the impulse to tell her to take it easy, eat her lunch, don't worry about it.

But of course that wouldn't do her any good. She'd been shot in the middle of a funeral for her Captain, never given the chance to move through that grief before she was fighting for her life.

"Kate, love. He did the best he knew with the mistake he made."

She pressed her lips together and curled back to the bed on her side, turned away from him again but only because that was the shoulder she could lean on. The white ties of her hospital gown hung at her spine, the bandage peeking into view as the fabric shifted. He reached out and smoothed the edges closer together, but he still saw goosebumps rippled across her skin.

He turned on his heel and made for the bag of stuff her father had brought, rifled through it until he found one of his own clean tshirts.

"Kate."

She hummed something like his name as he came back to the bed, and he plucked at the tie at the back of her neck.

"Castle?"

"I don't know why you have to keep wearing this. You're freezing," he muttered, his fingers unsteady in the knot.

She kept still until he had the whole thing undone, and then he slid his fingers down the sleeve and pulled it off her arm. She sat up again with his help, let him disrobe her, the long white column of her back exposed to his eyes and the cool air of the room.

He ignored the bandage and grasped the head hole of his tshirt, drew it down over her hair until it settled around her shoulders.

"Can't lift my arms," she sighed.

"I can do it without moving you too much," he promised. He drew first one arm into her chest, reached around her to manipulate her hand into the sleeve, arranged the material of the shirt around her so that her arm barely moved.

"I feel like a child," she muttered.

He did the same with her other arm, able to position the gaping material of his shirt so that she never had to rotate her bad shoulder. She turned her head to look at him finally, a shine in her eyes that she'd most likely swear wasn't tears.

He didn't try to kiss her, didn't comment on it, just eased her back down on her side and pulled the blankets up.

He left her while she napped, the three police officers outside her door, and found a diner down the block, bought her a strawberry milkshake. Being outside her hospital room brought the real world rushing back, and he couldn't help checking his messages as he carried her milkshake back with him.

Eastman had Forster following after Maddox. He'd been switched to NYPD custody only three hours ago, back when Beckett was just beginning to pester him about the timeline. No change in his status, but Forster had reported that Maddox's processing was taking twice as long as normal.

Not too big a concern, since Maddox had shot a police detective and the NYPD was probably taking the time to make certain they did it right.

Castle crept back inside her room and put the milkshake on the bedside table, cleared off the tray, and gave it to one of the police officers to handle. Castle shut the door after him and sat down in the chair, for the first time not sure what to do next.

Maddox was being watched over, Eastman was on top of things at the Office - including placating Castle's father, and Esposito and Ryan were digging into Smith's background looking for more connections and possible hiding places for that file.

Castle closed his eyes and settled into the quiet, letting the facts and suppositions about her mother's case swirl in his head and hopefully sift out.

Kate woke not long after that, her movements bringing his eyes open, and the lovely, surprised, shy smile on her face nearly killed him.

Her fingers reached for the tall cup that was her slowly melting milkshake, and she brought it close.

"Thank you," she murmured, her lips curled up and her eyes on him.

Anything. Anything at all.

* * *

He'd hidden his laptop under her hospital bed, in the tray attached beneath it that housed the plastic bag of her personal effects, and she laughed softly at him when he pulled it out.

"I didn't know that was there." She was standing beside the bed despite his intention that she rest, and he was the one actually in her hospital bed.

"If you had, would it have kept you from getting out of bed to roam the city looking for me?"

"No."

He frowned and opened it up, leaned back against the upright hospital bed, putting the laptop to one side as he waited for it to connect. "Since you're not using this comfy bed," he muttered.

She sighed at him but leaned against the far bedside railing and thumbed the button on the controls. He startled when the bed went down and she laughed at him, smiling, and then carefully crawled up over his chest and laid there, both of them half-reclined.

And how could he say no to that?

Castle stroked his fingers through her hair and cupped the side of her face, keeping one eye on the laptop. When it was ready, he accessed the CIA's database and queried Air Force One's most recent entries.

She had her cheek over his heart but her eyes were open and watching the screen.

"It's a longshot," he warned.

"I know. But I bet we can recreate who was on that plane."

He had nothing to say in the face of her virulent determination, but he could still stroke the fingers of his left hand through her hair, trailing the pads across her cheekbone and temple, touch to his heart's content.

He used his right hand to move the mouse over the results list, scanning quickly - too quickly for drugged Kate to keep up with, surely - but she watched nonetheless, pretending like she could. He hoped to put her to sleep with the slow slide of his fingers through her hair, the warmth of his palm against her ear, and then he would shut the laptop and give them a chance to rest.

Together.

She needed to rest.

"Oh, wait. Go back," she murmured, and evidently she was trying to lift her head from his chest but couldn't.

"You can see that?" Castle scrolled back a few and saw what she'd noticed while he'd been daydreaming. A list of senators from the Appropriations Committee who were supporting a draft of a bill-

"They were all on that plane."

"What? How do you-"

"Look," she murmured, her fingers curling in his shirt like she wanted to point it out but couldn't. "Just - it says they've approached the President to review the draft, something about their Homeland Security Subcommittee-"

"Oh, you mean because they reviewed the draft with the President-"

"-they had to be on that plane," she finished. "It's date and time-stamped from when they filed this item."

He studied the monitor for a moment and then tilted his chin to look down at her. Eyelids closing, lashes skimming her cheeks, she was barely awake.

"You're right," he said quietly.

"Look em up," she murmured.

He looked up the names of the three senators on the Committee and glanced back once more to Kate. She was breathing slow and deep, her fingers now loose in his shirt, her legs falling between his, hair in a tangled mess under his hand.

And _she _had made the right connections and broken open this case.

He read out the senators names like a lullaby, soothing her to sleep:

"Arnold Cochran of Mississippi, Robert Jeffries of Indiana, and William Bracken of New York."


	10. Chapter 10

**Close Encounters 3**

* * *

He had meant to rest, close his eyes and if not sleep then at least let go for a few hours, be Beckett's pillow.

Instead, he found himself shifting her just enough so that he could search a little easier, the laptop on the bed beside his hip, his eyes scanning the results. He was tempted to eliminate Cochran and Jeffries just on geography alone, but he put in quiet calls to the senators' staffs.

He got confirmation that each man was on the President's plane through friendly secretaries who unknowingly gave him the information he needed. Even when he had to laugh and charm the last one to get it, Kate never woke.

All three were on the plane.

He did some surface searches through each man's personal history, reading the official biographies and then going a little deeper to fill in the gaps. He found college enrollment and graduation dates, marriage licenses, birth certificates for their children, even a few DUIs and a lone credit card statement published by someone with an axe to grind against Bracken.

The senator from New York.

Castle itched to keep going, and so he messaged Eastman to task the office computer with a query on William Bracken, dig into his finances, phone records, property taxes, that kind of thing. He wanted, specifically, to know what calls Bracken had made or received while on that plane. If it was him, someone had told him what was going on, warned him of Maddox's capture.

When he couldn't go any farther without Eastman's information, Castle shut the laptop and rested his hand over it, letting himself think.

He needed sleep. Badly. But he could feel this case breaking open even as he laid here, Beckett's body draped over his.

So he carefully shifted out from under her, a cradling hand at her neck to keep her steady, and he laid down the head of the bed all the way so she could sleep.

Castle took the laptop and opened it up at the foot of her bed, turned to the whiteboard and took up the marker.

He started with a timeline for the life of William Bracken.

* * *

Kate felt the bed shift and warmth at her side, the crick in her neck flare to life from sleeping on her stomach.

She opened her eyes and saw Castle standing in front of her, his hand rather unconsciously resting on her upper thigh, his eyes on the white board. She shifted and instinctively turned to her side to see better, sucked in a breath at the tearing jolt that went through her back.

Castle jerked away and dropped the marker, then leaned forward to grip her by the arm. "Whoa, you okay?"

She nodded. "Just moved wrong. What are you doing?"

He helped her ease upright, then sat beside her on the bed, letting her lean her chest against his shoulder. His hand came to her knee, but his eyes were on the white board.

"Just putting up what I could find."

"What did you find?" she said, licking her chapped lips and trying to clear her head of the drowsy warmth. "What is all that?"

"Timeline."

"For?"

"Senator William Bracken of New York."

She stared at the board, his mess of lines and demarcations, information in bullet points and sloppy lists, the letters cramped as he'd gotten to the bottom. "You filled it up."

"It's him. Kate, this is the guy."

"What guy?"

He snorted and turned to look at her; she felt his eyes studying her profile and she gave him a small smile. She felt knocked down and the muscles in her back and abs were protesting.

"Beckett. The guy. The-"

"Wait." She sat up straighter, clutched the edge of his shirt with a fist. "Hold on. You - this is - you can't be serious. You did this without me?"

He shut his mouth, narrowed his eyes at her.

She averted her gaze and clenched her jaw, bit down into the soft skin of her inside lip to keep tears from spilling over her cheeks. "He gave the order. He hired Coonan. That's what you're telling me."

"Kate."

"You did this without me."

"No. You were right here. Not exactly conscious for all of it, but you were the one who realized those senators had been on that plane. You were the one who told me to look them up."

She couldn't do this to him, couldn't keep doing it - putting up a wall when it came to her mother's death. Her body had failed her, but Castle had gone on in her stead, in her name, found the clues they'd needed. There was no wall; the wall had crumbled to dust. And because he'd forced his way past it - look what had been done.

William Bracken, the senator from New York.

Bracken had killed her mother.

"Tell me," she said harshly, her throat closed up with it. "Tell me how."

"Kate, I shouldn't have-"

She shook her head, felt the growl rip from her chest at the way that ached, _ached. _"No, just. Tell me. Tell me how you got here."

He tried to cup her cheek but she pulled her head back. If he was nice to her, if he was gentle with her, she'd break apart.

Castle dropped his hand to his lap and stared at her for a moment too long.

A moment too much.

The tears overran her eyes and streamed down her cheeks; she closed her lids and slumped into herself, pressing her hand to her face to cover it.

"Kate. I wish - I knew you needed answers. . .so I just kept going." Apologetic, but fierce all the same. As if daring her to say differently.

She felt his arm come around her neck and his body cant into hers, not pulling or tugging, but him coming to her instead. She turned her head into his shoulder, let his shirt soak the worst of her tears, and then she pushed away.

"Tell me how," she repeated. "Make the connections."

His thumb glanced off her chin, damming the stream, and then he stood up.

"I made a timeline," he started.

* * *

He sat beside her on the bed as she took it all in.

If he'd thought he knew how she'd react, he knew nothing.

This was not what he'd expected.

The tears had ceased, all evidence of their display erased and absorbed into her skin. She sat cross-legged, hunched over and twisted to keep from straining her back, and her hands were in tight, white-knuckled fists in her lap.

"We wait," she said finally. "We do this right."

"What?"

"If it's him-"

"What do you mean, if?"

"All I have left to me, Castle, is the law. Justice. And justice is blind. _If_ it's him-"

"It is."

"Then we do this right. We gather evidence; we make an air-tight case."

A case? She wanted to waste time and effort finding evidence? "Kate, love, you'll never get the dirt on this guy. He's-"

"I will," she growled, her face twisting and then smoothing out again. "I will. I've waited twelve years for this. I won't let this fall apart on me."

"It's still a federal case," he said quietly, hesitant to bring it up. "You'll have to-"

"Go through you," she finished, a slim and beautiful eyebrow arched at him. "I don't foresee any problems there. Do you?"

The coldness in her voice knocked him out. He shook his head, unable to speak, and she nodded as if to herself.

"Exactly. I'll get him. I will make him pay, Castle."

"I could make him pay," he said darkly, the images already taking root in his mind. The methods, the training he had, the skills. He could make it hurt-

"You think I couldn't?" she said harshly.

He jerked his head around to see her. She was still clenching her fists.

"This is how he pays, Castle. He flaunted the law; he thought he could get away with murdering whomever he wanted to gain power and money. The system he flagrantly ignored is going to be what takes him down."

In court. She seriously wanted-

"My mother was a lawyer. My father's a lawyer. I'm a cop. If I don't have - if I run at this guy like some kind of vigilante, then it brings me down in the muck with him. My mother had integrity - that's why she was helping Pulgatti in the first place, why she was getting involved. I carry her integrity with me, Castle. Even here. Especially here."

"But this is a war," he roughed out, shaking his head at her. "And integrity in war doesn't amount for shit."

"You're wrong." She spread her fingers out and gripped her knees as if she needed to hold on. "If they want a war, I will bring a war. But I will do it right. I will do it right because that is all I have left - that is my mother's legacy to me and that's what will be Bracken's downfall."

He watched her determination flare hot and desperate in her eyes, that strange stillness of having answers at the back of it all.

She thought he was wrong, but he knew better.

He'd give her time, let her work her way through this, let her see how impossible it was.

And then he'd dispose of Bracken like the cancer he was.

* * *

Beckett shivered as she erased the white board, pushing her hand through the effort of movement. Tremors rolled down her spine, her muscles spasmed, and she had to keep her bad side curled in, her shoulder immobile, but she would do this alone.

Castle was wordless against the bed, watching her.

She grit her teeth and scraped the eraser over the name, the _name_, and felt the thrum of blood rushing through her body, her heart beating madly in protest. For the erasure or for her effort, she didn't know. But her back ached clear through to her chest, as if she'd been shot clean and the bullet had exited, leaving only this channel through her body, open and raw and bleeding.

"Beckett."

"Almost done," she growled.

He didn't try to talk her out of it and she sucked in a slow, shallow breath to keep the black at the edges of her vision, allowing it no further in. She pushed the eraser over the line of Bracken's life, clearing away his campaign, his senate seat, his appointment to the committee. His wife, his children, the dates he was in the City and the phone calls to burner cells that corresponded-

She stopped. Blanked her mind. Found her center just as the grief therapist had taught her. And when she'd found that still, small voice in her head that murmured _calm_ to her, she continued.

She erased William Bracken of New York, leaving only the faint remnants of the marker behind, the pieces of black dust and the trails of Castle's letter strokes.

She had a name.

Now she would nail him.

* * *

"No," he growled into the phone. "I won't."

Agent Black didn't stoop to anything quite so lowly as a growl, but Castle could hear the distaste in his voice. "You jeopardize our other agents in New York City by remaining there."

"Beckett was shot-"

"Because _you_ were the target, Richard."

"I'm not going underground and leaving her unprotected."

"I told you we'd provide-"

"Like hell," he snapped, pacing away from her closed hospital door and farther down the hallway. "Your idea of providing protection is a couple of agency flunkies-"

"Richard."

"I won't. End of discussion." He ended the call and sank back against the wall, scraping his jaw.

He had a responsibility to guys like Eastman - his agency brothers, the guys who'd always had his back. But he was not leaving Beckett when she was chained to a hospital bed, barely able to take deep breaths let alone raise her weapon and defend herself.

No. He wasn't running away and hiding, not even for the CIA. He'd just. . .lay low. Extremely low. He would stay away from the office, use his laptop and phone but not meet up with Eastman or any of his team. He'd be spending most of his time with Beckett anyway-

Shit. The case against Bracken would be stalled if he couldn't go in to the office. She wouldn't be happy about that - physical therapy would be brutal and she'd need the distraction and motivation of piling up evidence.

Well. He'd figure something out.

First, he needed to talk with Forster and get an update on Maddox, find out what was going on there. He'd have Eastman meet him.

* * *

Beckett woke in a sweat, grunted as her body's panic flashed pain through her back. And then she sensed the presence in the room and carefully turned onto her good shoulder, opened her eyes.

She groaned.

His damn father.

"Detective."

Well, that was better than last time. At least he was using her official title and not just coldly staring her down. "Special Agent Black," she muttered.

He studied her, eyes flicking from her scraped back hair to the gaping neck of her hospital gown and then down to her fisted hands. She refused to straighten the gown, held her own under his gaze.

"I don't get it," Black said finally, contempt evident in his voice.

She didn't answer; it wasn't a question.

"You have some kind of hold over him. I've given up trying to break it."

Well, shit-

"When you got him stabbed, I warned you."

"Excuse me, is that a question?"

Black narrowed his eyes and templed his fingers. "Detective, whatever it is you do to him, it's something I can use."

"Fuck you."

"Perhaps you should listen before issuing crude epithets."

She stared him down, lifting an eyebrow. "Captive audience here."

"You've put his life in danger, in case you hadn't noticed. And moreso - the lives of every man in my office."

Eastman, his partner. Her heart stuttered but she clenched her jaw.

"A sniper, Detective Beckett. Because of your dead mother."

"Shut your mouth," she growled back. "I-"

"And now he's refusing to go underground because of you."

He was. . .what? "Underground?"

"He needs to lie low until this blows over. Off the radar. He may be a CIA agent, but even spies are susceptible to bullets from long-range snipers."

She blanched and closed her eyes, tried to wipe out the sudden image.

"For all your faults, I see that bothers you as much as it does me."

She wanted to hit him; she did. She could barely move, but she wanted to make him hurt.

Bothered her. _Bothered_ her, like-

"If he stays in New York City, Detective, then they _will_ find him. They will silently remove him because he has the power to bring them down."

She could hardly breathe past the ache rippling in her chest.

"You won't know the day, the hour, but it will come. You'll be waiting on him to show up, only he never will. He'll be shot in the street in a faked mugging, or his throat slit as he-"

"What do I have to do?" she rasped, closing her eyes to keep back the cry.

* * *

Castle hesitated in the hallway outside Beckett's room, disturbed by some faint sense of unease that threaded through the atmosphere. He slowly pulled his weapon from its holster beneath his jacket.

When Maddox had - of course - been liberated from the NYPD's custody in a clusterfuck of epic proportions, Castle had turned right around and headed for the hospital. Now his heart pounded as wondered if the assassin had come back to finish the job.

When he pushed open Beckett's door, she was easing into a wheelchair, her face chalk white and her hands in fists.

"What're you doing?" he hissed, coming forward only to see his father on the other side of her. "Agent Black."

"The good detective has chosen to recover in solitude and safety," his father intoned dryly, meeting his eyes with a sardonic expression on his face.

"You did this," he said coldly, then turned and hunched down over Beckett, blocking her from his father's view. "Kate, don't listen to him. You don't-"

Her hand reached out and gripped his wrist tightly, crunching his bones. "You're coming with me."

"What?"

"To this Farm place. You're coming with me."

"You shouldn't be traveling," he said tightly.

"I'll be fine. You need - I. . .I need this."

Like hell she did. "Beckett, what about the _name_? The case?"

She closed her eyes, a noise coming out of her mouth that made his chest tighten and his blood burn. He'd kill his father for this, for screwing with her head like she was just another tool, an instrument to be used against him.

"Castle," she got out, her eyes opening again, so dark, so much pain. "You're not safe - out there. And I. . .can't - do - anything. So the case is - the case is on hold."

And even though she said it, he knew she didn't believe it, didn't want to believe it. Didn't want to admit that getting shot could in any way impede her investigation into her mother's killer. Her voice wavered on the last of it, but she was saying it anyway.

"Kate," he murmured, pushing the wheelchair farther away from his father, his hands on the arms and his body tilted towards hers. "Kate, don't-"

"I got shot saving your life, Castle. Don't make that for nothing."

He closed his eyes and bowed his head, sucked in a breath and felt her fingers at his temple, slowly combing through his hair. She'd never do that in front of his father unless she was playing him. She wanted Castle to go with her, and so she was pulling out all the stops - letting him see how much pain she was in, touching him, the emotional blackmail.

And even though he knew what she was doing, even though a corner of his brain admired her cleverness, it still worked.

"Okay," he groaned, shaking his head. He felt her fingers curl at his ear and her hand drop and he stood up, faced his father. Black wasn't outright smirking - no, that would be beneath him - but it was close. "You win. I'll go. But Beckett stays with me, no exceptions."


	11. Chapter 11

**Close Encounters 3**

* * *

"Kind of a switch," Beckett rasped, trying to take shallow breaths as the gurney she was on was loaded into the ambulance.

"A switch," Castle said flatly, turning his eyes once to hers and then away.

"Me the one back here, riding in a convoy to a safe place to recover." She knew that he'd figured out what had happened already, that his father had approached her with this plan, that stepping away from her mother's case _now_ was the last thing she wanted to do.

But Castle couldn't die for this, not this, not - not when she-

Loved him. She loved him, and it burned, and it made her life so damn complicated and difficult, but there it was. She was in love with a CIA spy.

And he had enemies out there, more than just _some damn mystery man_, as his father had stated it so baldly. Enemies who would like nothing more than the opportunity to eliminate a troublesome foreign spy. And Kate knew that all Bracken had to do was reach out to just one of them. . .

"Kate, it's not too late to stop this."

She ignored him again and winced as the paramedic jostled the gurney. He apologized and got her settled, then hopped out of the back and closed the doors. They weren't riding with any medical personnel for the first few hours, so Kate couldn't be doped for the journey. Castle had hotly argued with his father over the precaution of having no one else, tried to bully Black into providing someone from the office. But in the end, the only way to keep the Farm's location secure was to have a clean getaway.

Which meant that they'd meet up with a nurse from the Farm at another location, and until then, it was just the two of them in the ambulance, and she'd have to be awake for the drive.

Awake for every miserable mile.

Maybe she'd pass out.

Castle shrugged on the paramedic jacket and checked that the gurney was secured. "You sure?"

She nodded, closed her eyes. "I'll just. . .be here. Resting."

"Right," he said, his voice a sigh.

"Faster you get going, faster we get there."

"Kate," he murmured and the anger in his voice made her open her eyes. His jaw was so sharp, his hands in fists at her hip and shoulder, and the broad sweep of his shoulders made him look like he was cut from stone.

She lifted her fingers from the gurney and hooked them around his wrist, stroked up the inside of his arm and felt his skin ripple at her touch. Before she could make another move, he was leaning over her and taking a brutal kiss from her mouth.

And then he was gone, climbing between the bucket seats and behind the wheel, leaving her breathless and shaky and wishing she had the strength to move up front with him.

Just for a while.

* * *

Castle clutched the wheel tighter and tried to ignore the involuntary noises the rough ride was dragging out of her. She was trying to smother them; he could tell by the catch in her breath and the tortured sound of it, but she couldn't trap them all.

He had to keep up with the flow of traffic so he wouldn't attract attention, but he also tried to avoid harsh stops or potholes. Still-

"Castle," she called out.

"Beckett. You okay?"

"I need a distraction."

"I don't have a radio, but-"

"Tell me a story," she said quickly. "A story. Anything. That - the scar down your chin."

For one terrible moment, he blanked out completely. It seemed as if the desperation in her voice and the massive rumble of the ambulance's engine conspired against him and all he could see was that scene in the cemetery - her fingers clutching his biceps, her face surprised and terrible, the blood blooming over her dress uniform.

"_Castle_," she groaned.

"Of course. Yes. Anything. The scar. I-" He tried to place himself, his history, his life before her, and everything seemed faded and distant, no longer accessible. What had-

"Scimitar?" she said from the back, her voice still shaky but not weak, never weak.

"No. No," he said, a relieved breath when the events came back to him. "Let me think. You said I was a terrible storyteller, Beckett, so I've got some pressure here to do better."

"You jump right into the middle," she said back, sounding a little breathless, her voice hitching at the end before she continued. "You gotta build up slowly."

"Right. Build up slowly," he said back, his voice pitched over the engine and road noise, trying to keep her entertained. "So to start at the beginning, I don't know if I've told you this, Beckett, but my job is sometimes dangerous."

He thought he heard something like a snort out of her, a little more breathless than he'd like, but still better than the near-whimpering he'd been listening to for the last thirty minutes.

"You know when we were at the hotel?"

"Yeah."

"I got called out to chase down a gun smuggler who'd come over to the States-"

"Foley, you said."

"That's him. I told you his name?" He frowned at the road, but ignored that and moved on. "Foley and I go way back. He started out gun dealing in Northern Ireland and progressed up the ranks to an international dealer fairly quickly. Oh, the story about the bomb on the plane-"

"The moonless night over the Channel," she supplied, her voice little more than a mutter.

"Yes. That was his group. And that was why he came to the States six months ago - he was looking for payback. I cost him a lot of money, but more than that - he looked bad to his buyers. Heard they took it out on him."

"Foley. Mm-okay. Number one bad guy. Your nemesis."

"You could say that. I got the scar down my chin from my first run-in with his group. Wasn't even him - in fact, until six months ago, I hadn't seen him face to face. Only a few grainy photos."

She hummed from the back. At least he thought it was her, thought she was still with him.

"Eastman and I worked this one together, and we had traced a New York shipping company back to Foley's group in Northern Ireland. When we touched down in Belfast, Foley had guys waiting for us. We hadn't been quiet about our investigation, and he was quick."

He didn't hear anything from her, but he kept going, knowing she needed something to concentrate on other than every harsh jerk of the vehicle.

"They wanted to send a message, loud and clear, so they made us kneel and then they tried to scare us with whips. You know the-"

"Whips?" she croaked. "Castle. Shit."

"Yeah. One of the strands got too close to my neck and licked my chin."

"Licked."

"Not as nice as when you do it."

"Shit. You got away?"

"Yeah. I reached back and grabbed the cord and yanked the guy down, punched him in the face. Felt good. Eastman had already gotten up, and we had the element of surprise then. So. Yeah."

"So. Yeah?" she huffed. "Terrible ending, Castle."

"Hey, actually, we're coming up on the exit, Beckett, and I have to pay attention to the directions. I'll save the ending for later."

She didn't say anything to that, and he risked a quick glance back to see her eyes closed, her fists clenched, her body rigid in the bed.

He went a little faster down the exit ramp.

* * *

_Finally._

She could cry.

Castle was the first in the back of the ambulance and right behind him was a male nurse from the New York CIA office. Castle scooted up on the bench seat at the head of the gurney and immediately he was touching her, fingers across her forehead, down the side of her face, his other hand around hers.

She could cry but she wouldn't. Wouldn't. Not the time or place, and not a good enough reason.

Relief. Shit, she had to get control of herself.

"All right, Beckett. He's gonna give you the good stuff," Castle said, giving her a twisted smile.

"Afraid I need it," she said back, turning her head into the heat of his palm, trying to breathe again.

"You got it. Anything." His thumb traced her eyebrow and around her cheekbone to her nose, a wide circle that made her heart slowly cease its thrashing.

"It's in," the nurse called out and she immediately felt the ambulance kicking forward. She lifted startled eyes to Castle and he smiled down at her.

"Driver. Ed Caldwell. Good guy. We're fine."

She blinked and nodded and suddenly it hit her, a wash of dizzying heaviness that pressed her down into the gurney. "Castle. . ."

"Sleep, Kate. I'll tell you the end of that story."

"Yeah," she murmured and her eyelids wouldn't lift, her body numb and silvery with darkness, the stars wheeling through an endless and eternal night.

* * *

Castle stroked the smooth angle of her inside arm, rubbed his fingers at that soft skin at the crook of her elbow. The nurse was a guy named Logan - good guy, kept his eyes on Beckett's vitals and nowhere else - and Castle was trying to tone down his near-crippling need to hover, but it was difficult.

He wasn't sure the last time he'd ever been so damn scared. They weren't in immediate physical danger, but the idea of a helpless, out of it Beckett had him shredded. Her admittance to needing the pain meds, the white cast to her face, the half-moon nail marks in her palms set up an echoing hollowness in his chest that he didn't know how to fill.

Except with her. Soaking her in, touching her, crowding close. With her unconscious, at least he wasn't annoying. Only pathetic.

He gave in and curled his fingers around her palm, lifted his other hand to rest at the top of her head so he could pet the hair back from her face. Her skin felt so thin, so insubstantial, a weak defense against all kinds of terror.

He wanted to hide her away from the world, and at the same time, he wanted to show her off to millions. He wanted to lace his fingers with hers and feel that jolt of awareness and pride as she stood beside him, so strong, so tall. He wanted to come up behind her and slide his knee between hers and have her rest against him, find refuge.

He'd never known a woman like her.

He didn't know how long he sat there, hunched over the gurney with his hand making constant motions over her forehead, her wrist, two points of contact that seemed to keep him running. But when he looked down at his watch, three hours had passed and she was beginning to stir.

Her lashes fluttered, a dreamy and content smile slipped on her lips before her eyes opened.

"Hey, baby," she murmured.

He huffed and Logan snorted beside him, a press of his lips to quell it. Castle glared at him and then looked back at Kate, but she'd already fallen asleep again.

"Baby, huh?"

"Shut up, Logan."

"My wife calls me baby."

He narrowed his eyes and refused to comment.

"It's cute. Never took you for the _baby_ type, Agent Castle."

"Never took you for the type to run your mouth."

"Aw, then you haven't been around me long enough."

Castle sighed.

_Baby_. Really? They were gonna have to talk about that.

* * *

"I did not," she rasped, clearing her throat when the words got stuck. Her eyelids were so heavy. It was so loud in here. So. . .so tired.

"You did," the nurse added. "I heard it too."

"Fuck you say," she mumbled and shifted to turn over.

Castle's hands were suddenly at her shoulder, gripping hard. "Whoa, whoa, Beckett. Not like that. Can't lie down on your back."

"Fuck," she groaned, felt him pushing her to her stomach. Her back felt heavy, a strange weight across her shoulders.

"You have such a dirty mouth when you're tired." His voice was amused in her ear, low and delicious. "Calling me baby. That's just wrong."

"Never," she said, tried to be insistent about it, but she was afraid it came out breathy and listless. "Kill me first."

"Too late, Beckett. You're too pitiful to kill."

"Shit. What am I gonna do?" What were words, these words kept coming out of her mouth. "What the fuck did you give me?"

"Just a little cocktail. You'll be painless for hours," the nurse replied. When she opened her eyes to see him, he was grinning like a maniac.

"We usually put your type in prison. Sadistic son of a-"

"Enough, Beckett. Go back to sleep."

"Can't," she muttered, shifting her head and feeling her cheek scrape against the sheets. "Can't - I feel weird. I feel so weird. I'm gonna slip off."

"You're fine. You're okay. Here, feel my hand?"

The bright pressure of his fingers around her arm made her sigh, blink fast to keep from falling. She was going to slide right off-

"Feel my hand, Beckett?"

"I'm gonna fall."

"You're not falling."

"Don't let me fall," she groaned.

"Here, here," he said quickly, and then his palm was cupping her ear, his hand so heavy on her head and neck, pinned. She was caught. "How's this? You okay?"

"Yeahhh. . ."

"Yeah? Good. I'll stay right here so you won't fall, Kate."

She whined and tried to open her eyes, felt the whirl of her body out from where his arm and hand held her down. She reached up to clench his forearm, keep him there, hang on.

"I got you, Kate. I got you. You're okay. You're fine."

Her lids bounced up and open, her eyes tracked to his face. His beautiful, heartbreaking face. How hard. He could cut her with it. But instead, oh look. Instead of all those angles and planes, there was just so much soft skin and light and those so blue eyes, and so - she was just so-

"Hey," he murmured and leaned into kiss her nose, his lashes brushing against her.

She hummed and her eyes slipped shut, down, out.

And then open.

He was watching her, he was holding her together.

"Love you," she sighed and let herself go.

* * *

Castle's eyes met Logan's and he was hiding a smile.

"Well, she is certainly. . ."

"If you say fiesty, I will cut off your balls," Castle growled.

Logan grunted, but he was laughing. "Can I think it?"

"Not if it leads you to think about Beckett."

"Not thinking it then. Got it."

He narrowed his eyes at the man but Logan was already turned back to checking Kate's vitals, doing his job once more.

Castle stayed crouched over Beckett's gurney, his upper body practically draped over hers, as if he needed to defend her while she slept. She was coming out of it more and more, each moment of lucidity getting that much longer, but the in between times were still heavy with sleep.

Her fingers twitched around his forearm, her eyelids fluttered. After a moment more, her mouth opened, pink tongue touching her teeth, and he couldn't help leaning in to kiss her, so very very softly.

He'd shoot Logan if any of this ever got back to the office.

* * *

She woke when the doors opened, heart pounding, arms flailing out, but he caught her, he'd caught her, he had her.

"Castle," she gasped, felt the night air around her face, the faint shimmer of moonlight.

"You're okay. We're here. Just moving you out, Beckett."

She blinked and slowly peeled her fingers off his arms, released him. The gurney was already being pulled out of the back of the bus, a smooth and continuous motion that made her feel strangely weightless.

A stranger's face hovered over her, but she thought maybe - maybe she should know him. He was grinning down at her as he lowered the gurney's wheels to the pavement.

"Hey, baby's awake."

"Baby?" she grunted.

"Shut the hell up, Logan." Castle was shoving him in the shoulder and taking over wheeling her out. His hands came down near her head and she tried to move her limbs, see if maybe she could just walk. This was humiliating.

Already she was being pushed towards a monstrous stone farmhouse, lit with moonbeams and flanked by weeping willows, the ground beneath the gurney jolting her ever closer.

"Where are we?" she muttered, tried to lift a hand but found herself restrained. She'd been belted into the gurney, the strap across her upper shoulders, her lower waist, her legs. She tried to turn and felt Castle's stilling hand at her cheek.

"We're at the farm," he murmured. "It's about one in the morning, Beckett. We'll get you settled in a room-"

"What about you?" she said sharply, fear making her strong, flashing through her like icy water.

"What?"

"You're staying. Right. Castle-"

"I'm staying, Beckett. I'm staying."

She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, breathing out. She couldn't remember - the whole day was a jumbled mess of images and she couldn't figure out which ones were real, what order they went in.

She opened her eyes again and saw the broad flex of his forearm against the gurney, the grip of his hand. It was soothing and she didn't even know why. She focused on the shift of moonlight across his skin and the strength in his arm and how he was carrying her away.

"You're staying," she said, making sure she'd actually heard it right. "You're with me, Castle."

"I'm with you, Kate."

* * *

The Farm was a stone farmhouse the CIA had obtained twenty years ago and modeled after Camp Peary. Most former residents called it Stone Farm to distinguish it from that CIA training facility, and also because the director was a formidable brute of a man who towered like a stone statue over every proceeding.

Castle had never met Ragle, and he wasn't sure he liked him. But it was possible that was the frustration with his father talking and not really the director's fault.

The cramped room he assigned to them held a queen-sized four poster bed, but since the only other furnishing was a rickety dresser, Castle estimated it would seem bigger once everyone cleared out. Logan and two techs got Beckett settled while the trauma specialist took a look at her chart. The IV was hung, the pulse oximeter attached to her finger.

And then Dr West kicked Castle out to do an intake exam, unlooping his stethoscope from around his neck. West was a grizzled man in his sixties, and even with his taciturn manner, he seemed more reliable and confidence-inspiring that her too-suave surgeon back at the hospital.

Castle shut the door to the room and took measured steps down the hall until it opened up into a sitting area. The director of Stone Farm came forward with a hand outstretched and they shook briefly, assessing each other once more in the lamp-lit room.

"We've never had a civilian here before," Ragle said.

"She's not a civilian," Castle said. He clasped his hands behind his back and waited.

"All right, an NYPD detective, so I hear."

He nodded once. Technically, Ragle outranked him, but Castle wasn't going to give out more information than necessary.

"Fine, keep it close," Ragle said, hands on hips. "Let me give you a rundown on our procedure, and tomorrow morning I'll walk you through Stone Farm, introduce you to the rehab staff, and get a schedule set up for our patient."

"Thank you, sir."

Ragle still didn't look convinced, but he shook his head and gestured to an easy chair pulled up to a low table. Coffee was waiting in two navy mugs, and Castle took a seat and a cup and settled in for the lecture.

* * *

Lying on her stomach, Beckett opened her eyes to a moon-shimmering darkness and the shadowed outline of a man sitting beside her bed. Castle had pulled the wooden chair so close that it touched the mattress, but he was hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, head bowed, fingers steepled.

She smoothed her fist and pushed her hand to his thigh, scratched at his jeans.

His head lifted.

Why was he all alone, sitting by himself?

He must have seen something in her face or her eyes, because he uncurled his body towards her and crawled in, his fists in the mattress, the bed sinking, his mouth hovering over her cheek until his nose nuzzled her neck and he breathed her in.

She managed to lift her hand just enough to curl at his ear, scrape along his scalp until he settled down beside her, a leg over her thighs, his body pressed along her good side.

She kept her fingertips sliding through his hair, felt his mouth at her bicep, his cheek on her arm in a strange contortion she'd never be able to keep up all night, but wished, so desperately, that she could.

But it was okay. She'd have time enough now for that. He wasn't going anywhere.

His eyes were open and watching her, unblinking in the darkness.

She shifted in closer and managed to press her lips to his forehead, hummed at his skin. "Sleep, Rick. You need to sleep now."

And when she pulled back to check, his eyes were already closed.

* * *

end

stay tuned for **Close Encounters 3.5: The Spy Who Loved Me**

* * *

He should shower; she saw it now, tasted it, felt it all over herself as well. They both needed to shower, strip the bedsheets off, be clean.

She drew her leg slowly off of him, felt that instinctive and clutching grip of his hand and kissed his jaw where she could reach. It tasted - wrong. She didn't want to know what it was she tasted. _Guilt._

"We should get cleaned up," she murmured. And because he was still not letting her go- "Castle, only if you can. I think I could - maybe in the sink-"

"No," he shuddered, as if coming awake after a long, cold sleep. His voice was raw. "No, I'll bathe you."

Her skin rippled at the words, but they weren't sexual, they didn't mean he wanted her. Still, there was intimacy in them now where there wasn't before. He wasn't just performing a necessary function; he wanted to be the one.

"Okay," she whispered at his jaw, giving in to it. Because she had no other choice.

He roused, his head lifting as if he was looking at her for the first time, and she eased off of his chest to lie on her side, watching him study her. He must sense it too, the shift between them. She curled her fingers at his chest and brushed her thumb over his stiff shirt.

Blood. Stiffened with blood.

She closed her eyes. This was her fault, her mother's case she'd dragged him down into, and now look. His father-

"Kate," he murmured. She felt him capture her hand and draw it to his lips. "I should probably - I need a shower first."

She nodded and opened her eyes to look at him. "You do."

"And then I'll clean out the tub and run water for you. Help you wash off all. . .this."

But would she ever be clean?

She swallowed and stared at him, the blue of his eyes like shale. A rock that couldn't hold together, fissile and weak, chipped away, dissolved by wind and water.

Eroded into nothing.

* * *

**Close Encounters 3.5: The Spy Who Loved Me**


End file.
